return
Several keywords represent unconditional branching, which simply means that the branch happens without any test. These include return, break, continue, and a way to jump to a labeled statement which is similar to the goto in other languages.
The return keyword has two purposes: It specifies what value a method will return (if it doesn’t have a void return value) and it causes the current method to exit, returning that value. The preceding test( ) method can be rewritten to take advantage of this:
//: control/IfElse2.java
import static net.mindview.util.Print.*;
public class IfElse2 {
static int test(int testval, int target) {
if(testval > target)
return +1;
else if(testval < target)
return -1;
else
return 0; // Match
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
print(test(10, 5));
print(test(5, 10));
print(test(5, 5));
}
} /* Output:
1
-1
0
*///:~
There’s no need for else, because the method will not continue after executing a return.
If you do not have a return statement in a method that returns void, there’s an implicit return at the end of that method, so it’s not always necessary to include a return statement. However, if your method states it will return anything other than void, you must ensure every code path will return a value.
[Thinking in Java, 99]
