The return statement terminates the execution of the method in which it appears and returns control to the calling method.
Generally, the return statement is useful when you want to get some value from any other method, if there is no need to get value from a method you can use void as a return type.
In the following example, Add and Subtract methods have int as return type and the Caller method has void as a return type.
public int Add(int a, int b)
{
return a + b;
}
public int Subtract(int a, int b)
{
return a - b;
}
public void Caller()
{
int numA = 4;
int numB = 32;
int result1 = Add(numA, numB);
int result2 = Subtract(numA, numB);
}
In the Add and Subtract methods, we used a return statement at the end. It will execute the method and return the resultant value using a return statement. In the above example, Add and Subtract returns an integer after adding or subtracting the two integers passed as parameters.
If the return statement is inside a try block and if there is a finally block then it will be executed before control returns to the calling method.
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var result = ReturnExample(2, 1);
Console.WriteLine(result);
}
public static int ReturnExample(int a, int b)
{
try
{
Console.WriteLine("Try block.");
return a + b;
}
catch
{
Console.WriteLine("Catch");
}
finally
{
Console.WriteLine("finally block.");
}
return 0;
}
}
Let's run the above example and you will see the following result.
Try block.
finally block.
Result: 3
All the examples related to the return statement are available in the ReturnStatement.cs file of the source code. Download the source code and try out all the examples for better understanding.