#🔒 return

66 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

gilded coral
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ive been trying to understand what a return statement does, can anyone explain it to me in simple terms

pastel cradleBOT
#

@gilded coral

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rapid pine
gilded coral
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kinda yeah

rapid pine
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can you explain in your own words what you think it is?

gilded coral
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calling a function is naming it so u can use it later on

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like this

rapid pine
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not quite

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that's defining a function

gilded coral
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oh

rapid pine
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def is short for "define"

gilded coral
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say_hello would be the caller ?

rapid pine
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say_hello("Timmy") would be the caller

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say_hello is the name of the function

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the () is what actually causes the function to run

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this is "calling"

gilded coral
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ah

rapid pine
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!e

def foo():
    print("Hello!")


foo()
pastel cradleBOT
rapid pine
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here I define foo, and then call it

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!e

def foo():
    print("Hello!")


foo()
foo()
foo()
foo()
pastel cradleBOT
rapid pine
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functions are great because we can define it once, but then reuse it as many times as we want

gilded coral
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oh its to reuse it

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and not write to much code

rapid pine
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yes exactly

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but because functions can also allow for parameters, it makes it even more versatile

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since we can reuse it but also get various results

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!e

def greeting(name):
    print("Hello", name)


greeting("Theryx")
greeting("Fashoomp")
greeting("Tommy")
pastel cradleBOT
gilded coral
#

alright

rapid pine
#

ok, especially as a beginner, most of the programs you write have a goal to "print" something

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but that's not always going to be the goal of writing code

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printing actually contains no data of its own

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it's simply a way for us to display some output

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so sometimes we might want a function capable of performing a task, and giving us the result

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are you familiar with the len function yet?

gilded coral
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yeah, i think it means how "long" the word is or how many characters in the word

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cant really explain it too well

rapid pine
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yes exactly

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len is a function

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it doesn't print anything when we use it

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it simply returns the value

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so if I do len("abc"), it will return 3

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we can store that result in a variable

# 
num_letters = len('abc')
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we are assigning a variable to the result of calling this function

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python will always evaluate whatever is on the right side of the = first

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so it will do len('abc'), which gives a result of 3

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then it will assign that 3 to num_letters

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this is only possible with return

gilded coral
#

oh

gilded coral
rapid pine
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so we're not assigning a variable to len('abc')

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we're assigning a variable to the result of calling that function

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return simply gives a value to a called function

# 
def foo():
    return 5


result = foo()
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as far as python is concerned, it sees the last line as result = 5

gilded coral
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oh okay so 5 is foo() right

rapid pine
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foo() is called, which then returns a value of 5

gilded coral
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ur explanation is very good im starting to really understand everything better

rapid pine
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let me know if you have any further questions about it

gilded coral
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alright yeah i apperciate the help

pastel cradleBOT
#
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