Re: setline vs call setline

Vim scripts are composed of ex commands. Functions are expressions, not
ex commands, so they can't be used "bare" in a script; that is, they
must be "wrapped" in a proper command.

Not a valid Vimscript statement:

foo()

Valid:

call foo()

:call is just an ex command that essentially just invokes the given
function and ignores its result. This is useful when you just care about
the side effects of a function but not the value it returns (if any).

Plenty of other commands can call functions as well, and all are valid
as statements in a script. The only restriction is that you can't invoke
a function by itself, without some kind of command that wraps it.
Another simple example is :echo, which evaluates its argument (which may
be a function) and prints the result.

Hopefully that clears things up a little.

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