There are n number of functions of URLs in laravel 4.x which is used to perform action that are

action:

action is a function which is used to generate a URL for a given controller action.

Example:

$url = action('HomeController@getIndex', $params);

route:

route is a function which is used to generate a URL for a given named route.

Example:

$url = route('routeName', $params);

link_to:

link_to is a function which is used to generate a HTML link to the given URL.

Example:

echo link_to('foo/bar', $title, $attributes = array(), $secure = null);

secure_url:

secure_url is a function which is used to generate a fully qualified URL to a given path using HTTPS.

Example:

echo secure_url('foo/bar', $parameters = array());