Return type

In computer programming, the return type constrains the resulting value from calling a method or function. It must be explicitly mentioned when declaring a function in many of the high-level programming languages, such as Java programming language, C plus plus, C programming language and many others.

A Java example could be:

public int someMethod()

In this example, the return type is int and must be explicitly declared in order conform to the syntax of Java. This means that when that method is completed, it will return a value of type int.

In Java, the return type can be any object or interface type, or any of the primitive types. An example of a Java object type is java.lang.String, whereas char is a primitive Java type.