What is the purpose of returning?? Confused on what it would be used for, i'm a beginner.
Hello, I have been watchin peasfactory, and I understand what he means when he explains returning. But, what is it useful for??
Heres his video about it------------
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3 answers
Return
Return is a keyword, and what it does is either return a value from a function, prematurely end a function, or both.
Returning values
1 | local function getTriangleArea(base, height) |
2 | return (base * height)/2 |
3 | end |
4 |
5 | local area = getTriangleArea(7, 4) |
The area variable holds the "result" of the function. In this case the result is 14, because the function returns the area of a triangle. Not all functions have return values. Another example of a function that has a return value is wait. Now this function has two return values; the delta time (time waited) and the time since the program started.
1 | local dt, timeSinceProgramStarted = wait(3) |
2 |
3 | print(dt, timeSinceProgramStarted) |
4 | --> 3.00038384925, 3838.9 (just an example, you will get different numbers) |
Prematurely ending functions
You can prematurely end a function, if, for example, a condition is NOT met.
01 | local pizzaPrice = 15 |
02 |
03 | local function orderPizza(customer) |
04 | if customer.Money.Value < pizzaPrice then |
05 | return -- return out of the function if they do not have enough money |
06 | end |
07 |
08 | -- Function won't even reach here if the condition above was met. |
09 |
10 | customer.Money.Value = customer.Money.Value - pizzaPrice |
11 | -- give them their pizza |
12 | end |
Hopefully this answered your question and if it did, then don't forget to hit that "Accept Answer" button. If you have any other questions, then feel free to leave them down in the comments below.
Return is useful for many things. It can be used for not letting a player run through a script like this:
1 | local canRun = false |
2 |
3 | while true do |
4 | if canRun ~= true then return end -- this would restart the script. |
5 | end |
EDIT: If you don't have a condition in which your script will run, calling return will stop the script forever. For example, this script would run halfway through, and then never run again:
1 | local a, b = 1, 2 |
2 |
3 | if a + b ~= 4 then return end |
4 |
5 | --random script (it doesn't matter whats down here because it won't run after the return |
return can also give us a value when used in a function, like this:
1 | function add(a, b) |
2 | return a + b -- this would return the value of whatever a + b equates to |
3 | end |
4 |
5 | print(add(3, 4)) |
6 |
7 | --the output would be 7 |
Hope this helped you out
-Cmgtotalyawesome
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giving or returinig gives back information when the function is called heres an example but this is useless
1 | function add(num1,num2) |
2 | return num1 + num2 |
3 | end) |
4 | print(add(1, 2)) |
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this is giving back the answer it also stops the function if there was code after the return it wouldn't run