Editing Scripting Tutorial Using Functions (section)

====Global Functions====
If you want to make some basic functions that everyone can use, and you don't want to have to have a scripted object in the world in order to use the function, you could make a Global Function.
This function can be found in Custom.psc:
<syntaxhighlight lang="Papyrus">
 ;This function returns the Nth objectReference in a linked ref chain.
 ;The root link in the chain is 1
 objectReference Function goToLink(int linkNum, objectReference startRef ) global
     int linkIndex = 1
     while(linkNum != linkIndex ) 
         linkIndex = linkIndex + 1
         objectReference nextRef = startRef.getLinkedRef()
         if nextRef     ;make sure that nextRef isn't "None" (i.e. the ref actually has a linked ref)
             startRef = nextRef
         else
             debug.trace( "Tried to access None link in custom.GoToLink()" )
         endif
     endWhile
     return startRef
 endFunction
</syntaxhighlight>
So there are some more things going on here. This function starts at a ref in the world (the startRef parameter) and then counts through a chain of linked refs. How many linked refs should it cycle through before the function is done? Whatever value gets passed into the "linkNum" variable, it will try to count through that many linked refs. Then it will say that it's done, and will spit out that reference of the linkedRef chain.
If you were to use this function, you could write something like this:
<syntaxhighlight lang="Papyrus">
 objectReference LinkInChain    ;makes a new objectReference (like a ref in the old scripting language) called LinkInChain
 
 LinkInChain = goToLink( 3, someRefInTheWorld)
</syntaxhighlight>
This will start at some reference in the world (set up somewhere else in the script as to exactly what ref that is) and go to the third linked ref in the chain. Then you can set whatever reference the function found, and it places that in the LinkInChain variable.<br>
You'll notice that the function declaration starts with "objectReference Function" instead of just "Function." This is because we want the function to return an objectReference so that we can know what the function found and place it in a variable.