CodeHS Glossary

Return statement Java

The return statement exits a method and returns a value.

One valuable aspect of methods is that they can perform some computations and return the result. The following code has a helper method that returns “hello world” when the method is called. The return value is stored into a variable, which is then printed:

public void run() {
    String textToPrint = getHello();
    System.out.println(textToPrint);
}

private String getHello() {
    String str = "hello world";
    return str;
}

Methods can return many different types of results, such as Strings, ints, doubles, and more.

If no value gets returned from a method, the method return type is void.