E129 when calling the function by call()

Question

I want to call the function by its name as string variable.

Help describes that I need to use the call():

call('ceil', [1.4])

But I am getting an error:

E129: Function name required

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

the confusing part here is that call is a command and call() is a function.

After : you cannot simply write foo(). You have to write a (ex-) command calling foo(), like in

call foo()    or
echo foo()    or
let a=foo()   and alike.

So in your example try :echo call('ceil', [1.4]) to see it working