return (redirected from returned)

In programming, upon completion of a routine or function, to go back to the point in the program that called the operation. When a function returns control, it may also return a result in the form of a value. For example, "the read function returns a -1 if the read fails" means that if the computer cannot read the file, before returning from the function, it stores a -1 in a variable defined by the programmer. See function. See also enter key and return code.