Return Statement in C programming

               It is the statement that is executed just before the function completes its job and control is transferred back to the calling function. The return statement serves mainly two purposes. They are:

1)      It immediately transfers the control back to the calling program after executing the return statement.

2)      It returns the value present in the parentheses to the calling function.

         The syntax for return is:

                     return expression;

     Here, the value of expression is returned to the calling portion of the program. The expression is optional. If the expression is omitted, the return statement simply causes the control to revert back to the calling portion of the program without any transfer of information. A function definition can include multiple return statements, each containing a different expression. But, a function can return only one value to the calling portion of the program via return.

/* Program to understand the use of return statement */

#include<stdio.h>

void funct( int, float) ;

main()

{ int age ;

float ht ;

printf (“Enter age and height :”) ;

scanf (“%d%f”, &age, &ht) ;

funct (age, ht) ;

}

void funct (int age, float ht)

{

if (age>25)

{ printf (“Age should be less than 25\n”) ;

return ;

}

if (ht<5)

{ printf (“Height should be more than 5\n”

return ; }

print (“selected \n”) ;

}

The second form of return statement is used to terminate a function and return a value to the calling function. The value returned by the return statement may be any constant, variable, expression or even any other function call which returns a value.

For example:

return 1 ;

return x++

return (x+y*z)

return (3*sum(a,b)) ;