Concept of Return Statement

The return statement is used inside a function to send a value back to the part of the program that called it, allowing the result to be stored, reused, or passed into other functions.

Using return in a Function

def add_numbers(a, b):
    return a + b

result = add_numbers(5, 10)
print(result)

return vs print()

print() only displays a value on the screen, while return actually hands the value back so it can be used elsewhere in your code.

def square(n):
    return n * n

total = square(4) + square(3)
print(total)

Returning Multiple Values

def get_min_max(numbers):
    return min(numbers), max(numbers)

low, high = get_min_max([4, 9, 1, 7])
print(low, high)

Coming Up

The final topic in this section explains a special variable, __name__, and the __main__ check used to control what runs when a Python file is executed directly.