The final pieces of the metaABM puzzle are functions. (Click on diagram to zoom in.)
The Function representation is relatively simple. As indicated above, Functions are used by Sinks to interpret some model state. Functions are broken into two broad types; Operators, which are simple calculations sharing the same type, and GenericFunctions that can represent any general function that takes some well-defined input(s) and returns some well-defined output(s). (Conceptually, functions can return multi-values, but that is not currently implemented in the reference targets because of limitations of the target language Java. Future reference implementations should address this issue.) Logicals return some binary result and that is used by Queries to decide whether target Acts apply to a particular selection. Input types should be defined as generally as possible.
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