🔒 need help with understanding returning functions in functions

[midnight belfry]

hi, im a beginner. in the below code, why is the resultValue None?

def wrapper(func):
    def wrapPrintAndReturn():
        print('im inside wrapper')
        func()
    return wrapPrintAndReturn

@wrapper
def printAndReturn():
    print('im inside printAndReturn')
    return 'returned from printAndReturn'
    
returnValue = printAndReturn()
print(returnValue) #None```


but when i instead do `return func()` in `wrapPrintAndReturn`, the output is what i expect i.e. returnValue prints 'returned from printAndReturn' 
```py
def wrapper(func):
    def wrapPrintAndReturn():
        print('im inside wrapper')
        return func()
    return wrapPrintAndReturn

@wrapper
def printAndReturn():
    print('im inside printAndReturn')
    return 'returned from printAndReturn'
    
returnValue = printAndReturn()
print(returnValue)

can you help me understand the working? as i understand in the first code, printAndReturn functions gets overwritten as the function wrapPrintAndReturn which is returned by wrapper, so the func gets called which is the original printAndReturn, im thinking thereby printAndReturn should be returning the string 'returned from printAndReturn' which does not happen. why?

[cobalt ruin]

@midnight belfry

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[upper linden]

Functions will only return something if you explicitly tell them to return (otherwise they return None)

def wrapPrintAndReturn():
    print('im inside wrapper')
    func()
``` is no different from ```py
def foo():
    print("hello world")
    bar()
``` being defined inside of another function does not magically changes it properties/behaviour

[midnight belfry]

oh got it, thanku. is it similarly the same in javascript (if you are familiar with it)?

i have mostly worked with only java and c

[upper linden]

I don't think that JavaScript has anything similar to Python's decorators, but I don't think that it implicitly returns anything either

js has some weird things related to this though

[midnight belfry]

alright

!close

[cobalt ruin]

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