Creating Functions that Return a Value - PHP

In the last section of this article we discuss functions that return a value. In the previous section we already touched on this kind of function. There are only two differences between the previous functions we discussed and functions that return a value. First, you use the return statement within the function. Second, you assign the result to a variable.

The syntax of a function that returns a value is something like this:

 function function_name($argument1,$argument2){

statements;

return $value;

}

As with our randpass() function in earlier sections, to call a function that returns a value we do this:

$variable = function_name($argument);

Another example is:

function sayhello($argument){

return "Hello $argument!"

}

A user defined function usually returns just a single value, but it can also return more than one value when arrays are used. Here's a example of how it's done:

function fname($arg1,$arg2,$arg3){

//your statements here

return array($value1,$value2,$value3);

} 

....and here's how you'd use the function.....

list($val1,$val2,$val3)=fname($n1,$n2,$n3);

The $value1 from the function is assigned to $val1 and $value2 is assigned to $val2 and so forth.