The return keyword immediately stops a function. This means that any code after a return won’t run.

Let’s compare two different functions: announceRunning() and announceRunning2(). The first of these is defined as follows:

function announceRunning()
{
  echo "The first function is running!\n";
  return "This is the return value of the first function.";
}

$first_result = announceRunning();
echo $first_result;

Let’s walk through the code above:

• We defined the function announceRunning().
• Next, we defined the variable $first_result and assigned as its value the result of invoking the announceRunning() function. This actually did two things. It executed the function causing "The first function is running!/n" to be printed. It also assigned "This is the return value of the first function." to $first_result.
• Finally, we printed $first_result.

That seemed to work as expected. In our terminal we saw:

The first function is running!
This is the return value of the first function.

Let’s contrast that to the following example:

function announceRunning2()
{
  return "This is the return value of the second function.";
  echo "P.S., I love you";
}

$second_result = announceRunning2();
echo $second_result;

In this example, the string "P.S., I love you" will never be printed! As soon as the return statement is reached, the function will end. So in the terminal, we’d see this output:

This is the return value of the second function.

Let’s use this new knowledge to fix some broken code!