Functions in Multicharts and Tradestation: Lesson 06

Working with Multicharts and Tradestation - Lesson 06: Functions Learn how to create and use functions in Multicharts and Tradestation Let’s take a look at what functions are and how they are used. We can use this as foundation for another lesson when we take a look at how to operate the function that comes with our free Value Area Indicator. In previous lessons we have looked at Moving Averages in various forms. The studies we wrote had all calculations within the main code block. This is fine to demonstrate things or when you only work with a few lines of code. However handling ten different moving averages within your code would require you to add the same code ten times. This would make your code much harder to read and the code maintenance would become harder, too. Think about a logic error you want to fix or a change in the average formula that you want to make. A mistake in the average logic is likely included in all ten code blocks. The change to the formula would have to be made at ten locations within the code. What are functions? Functions can be of help here. As the developer you can keep your code at one location, within a function. You can use this function now to provide the results of the computation to any other code. In case of a logic error in the code this can be a huge help. The error has to be corrected at one place only. At the same time this correction will effect all other codes that call your function. It doesn't even have to be as serious as an error. [...]