3.12 Void and Undefined

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2 | Racket Essentials
3 | Built-In Datatypes
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▼ | 3 | Built-In Datatypes

3.1 | Booleans
3.2 | Numbers
3.3 | Characters
3.4 | Strings (Unicode)
3.5 | Bytes and Byte Strings
3.6 | Symbols
3.7 | Keywords
3.8 | Pairs and Lists
3.9 | Vectors
3.10 | Hash Tables
3.11 | Boxes
3.12 | Void and Undefined

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#### 3.12`` Void and Undefined

Some procedures or expression forms have no need for a result value. For example, the display procedure is called only for the side-effect of writing output. In such cases the result value is normally a special constant that prints as #<void>. When the result of an expression is simply #<void>, the REPL does not print anything.

The void procedure takes any number of arguments and returns #<void>. (That is, the identifier void is bound to a procedure that returns #<void>, instead of being bound directly to #<void>.)

Examples:

> > (void)
> > (void 1 2 3)
> > (list (void))
> '(#<void>)

The undefined constant, which prints as #<undefined>, is sometimes used as the result of a reference whose value is not yet available. In previous versions of Racket (before version 6.1), referencing a local binding too early produced #<undefined>; too-early references now raise an exception, instead.

> > > The undefined result can still be produced in some cases by the shared form.

> (define (fails)
> (define x x)
> x)
> > (fails)
> x: undefined;
> cannot use before initialization

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