Javathon: 7. More About Methods

Let us first understand what 'methods' are:

Def: 'Methods' are pieces of code that take some input, and may return an output.

Remember how in the Hello World program in chapter-3 we declared the 'main' method?

Let us break it down. The general syntax to declare a method is as follows:

access-modifier static return-type name(input)

1. In the previous chapter, we have already seen what access-modifiers are for.

2. 'static' is something that we will discuss later on.

3. return-type: This is the datatype of the output that the function returns.

4. input: what? you don't know what input means?

So now let us see an example:

This is a simple method that takes two integers as input, and displays the sum as output.

To run this piece of code, right-click on the compiled class, and click on 'void sum(...)'.

Now, this method does DISPLAY an output, but it does not 'return' it. This is why it's return-type has been given as 'void'.

In order to RETURN an output from this method, replace the print statement with the following code:

return c;

Now can you figure out what the return-type of the method would be?

That's right. It would be 'int', as the variable that we're returning(c) is of the datatype 'int'.

So change the return-type of the method to 'int', and try running it again.

Javathon