What is the best way to learn returning and why should you learn returning?

[mohammedabergsson31 (red_fish)]

Some of you scripters have discovered this:

return

I am a beginner at scripting and just discovered returning.
I have been scripting for couple of months and have discovered new things
like events, folders, how to use events for tools, parameters and more.

This time i have discovered a kind of a complicated thing to learn: returning.

Now i am wondering what is the best way to learn returning and
why should you learn returning?

[dthecoolest]

This belongs in #help-and-feedback:scripting-support.

You can change it by editing the post and selecting scripting support.

Best ways to learn it is to look around for resources to learn it. If one is not enough then you go to the next one.

This post has a good explanation for why you need returning, functions, and both.

What is “return” and what’s its use in roblox scripting?

Before you understand return you need to understand a function’s purpose. What is a function’s purpose The purpose of a function is to shorten and simplify your code. For instance say I have this code that changes the color of 3 parts to green then to blue. local parts = { workspace.Part1, workspace.Part2, workspace.Part3 } for _, part in ipairs(parts) do parts[1].BrickColor = BrickColor.new("Bright blue") parts[2].BrickColor = BrickColor.new("Bright blue") parts[3].BrickColor = B…

This post has a good analogy to explain it:

What does 'return' do?

Example from real life: You go to a restaurant and order a sandwich and a drink. A bit later, you receive the sandwich and drink. In other words, you gave the restaurant input (your order) and it in turn gave an output (sandwich and drink). The process of the restaurant outputting would be what return does. In this analogy, you are the caller of the function, and the restaurant is the function. function Restaurant:OrderFood(orderInfo) -- Do some stuff to figure out the actual food retur…

Video on it:

Returning - Beginner Roblox Scripting Tutorial #8

For more advanced use on it you can use returning to cancel code from executing within Roblox Events.

[mohammedabergsson31 (red_fish)]

Thank you for helping me put the topic in the right category

[NoParameters (Para)]

To return is to just get a value back from a function. Take this example into consideration:

local function add(num1, num2)
    return num1 + num2
end
-- You could also write the function like this:
local function add(num1, num2)
    local sum = num1 + num2
    return sum
end
-- The functionality would be the same, the top one is just more efficient

If you know how parameters work, you’d know you can plug in whatever (number) you want for num1 and num2. So, for example, you could do this:

local sum = add(10, 25)
print(sum) -- prints 35, because 10 + 25 is 35

You can obviously make more complex functions that will make returning a single value more useful. A more useful (and simple) function that returns a value could be finding the distance between two parts.

If you’re into math, specifically vectors, you’d understand why this code works. But for now, let’s just assume you know why it works. Here’s how it’d look:

local function disanceBetween(part1, part2)
   return (part1.Position - part2.Position).Magnitude
end

With this function, you could check the distance between your player (via your character’s HumanoidRootPart) and any part in workspace. This could be useful if you wanted to allow players to press E to open a door for example. Constantly check if your player is in range of the door by using this function in conjunction with a Heartbeat loop.

This example below would just make the part named “GlowPart” in workspace Neon if you were within 10 studs of it’s radius.

local runService = game:GetService("RunService")
local glowPart = workspace:WaitForChild("GlowPart") -- pretend this exists

-- use your imagination here and also pretend I've already defined the local player, character, and HRP (HumanoidRootPart)
-- (I didn't for simplicity reasons, this is a lesson about *returning*
runService.Heartbeat:Connect(function()
    -- you could either store it in a variable like so:
    local distance = distanceBetween(HRP, glowPart)
    if distance <= 10 then
        glowPart.Material = Enum.Material.Neon
    elseif distance > 10 and glowPart.Material ~= Enum.Material.SmoothPlastic then
        glowPart.Material = Enum.Material.SmoothPlastic
    end

    -- Or you could just directly check it like this:
    if distanceBetween(HRP, glowPart) <= 10 then
        -- same functionality as above
    end
end