return.adoc

Return statement

The return statement is a very simple one. It just finishes the running of code in the current function and "returns" to the function’s caller.

As you have seen, functions are used to make code more understandable, cleaner and more organized. Say we have a couple of functions in our program:

minorHit = 3
majorHit = 7

def adjustHealth(player, hit):
    player[health] = player[health] - hit

    if (isAlive(player) == false):
        return playerDead

    return playerAlive

def isAlive(player, hit):
    if (player[health] >= 20):
        return true
    else: # player has died!
        return false

If someplace in our code we were to do something like:

# big hit!
continuePlaying = adjustHealth(playerOne, majorHit)

if (continuePlaying == playerDead):
    endGame()

You can see how when we call the function "adjustHealth()" it returns either playerAlive or playerDead, and we make a decision to end the game if the player has died.

Notice too, you can have multiple return statements in functions, and each one can return a different value if that’s what you need.