External user-defined functions
The CIF simulator supports external user-defined functions. Currently, the following external languages are supported:
Asynchronous execution
By default, external user-defined functions are executed asynchronously. This ensures that the simulation can be terminated during the execution of such a function. This is useful if such functions take a long time to execute. It is also particularly useful for external functions that never terminate, for instance because they get stuck in a loop, often due to a bug.
This asynchronous execution however, does lead to a performance penalty. To get rid of this performance penalty, disable asynchronous execution, leading to synchronous execution. Asynchronous execution can be disabled using the External functions asynchronous execution option (Simulator category).
By disabling the asynchronous execution, the simulator can no longer be terminated if it gets stuck executing an external user-defined function. If the functions runs for a long time, the termination is postponed until the external function finishes its execution.
Side effects
All user-defined functions in CIF are pure mathematical functions. They must therefore be deterministic, and may not have side effects. For internal user-defined functions, this is enforced. For external user-defined functions, it is mostly impossible to check this constraint in an implementation, and the responsibility for checking this is therefore delegated to the end user. Practically, this means that for instance logging statements in functions, while essentially side effects, may be permitted, as long as the function returns the same value, if given the same arguments. This is essential for correct simulation results, as the results of function calls may for instance be cached by the simulator.
Value semantics
The CIF simulator uses value semantics for the parameters and return values of functions. That is, changes to the parameters of functions in external user-defined functions are not reflected back to the CIF specification. Furthermore, changes to the return values in the CIF simulator have no effect on subsequent calls to external user-defined functions.