Passing Argument to Function

May i know how to pass an argument to a function in a shell script?

Sorry, i din stated that it is in a shell script in my previous post.

Means: checkStatus() {
...........
}

         read status;

I wanna use the status in the function checkstatus, how shall i do it?

Btw, can anyone gif me a few example of how to use sed?
Simple example will do...thx

#!/bin/sh

checkStatus() {

Parameter1=$1
......
return $Result

}

read Status
checkStatus $Status

ReturnValue=$?

exit 0

in case i do not know the exact number of arguments, what should i do?
in the sense, like @argv in perl...