Thread: breaking a method before having a return value

Hi again!

I just can't find a solution for my current problem.
Is there any solution i can break a running method which is supposed to return an int[] or whatever but !without! any return value.
I thought that might work with some exception but i didn't find a propper way. To be more specific i want something which tries to find out if a certain field of an object was set and if yes return it and if no returns a message which tells me that the input wasn't made so far.
something like:

       public int[] returnArray(){
           if(array_was_set==true) return the array;
           else show message that it wasnt set and quit the method without any return value;
       }

thanks in advance!

You can return null and use that as an indication that it wasn't set.

Hi.
When you declare in the method signature that it is returning a data type then it must have a return statement which returns that specific type value. Otherwise you will get compile-time error.
The only exception when a method can avoid return statement even though it has return type is when there is an infinite loop or an exception is thrown. Otherwise return statement is compulsory.
Coming to your question, you can easily achieve what you are doing. If you want to terminate at a particular point as per your requirement just say,
return null;

It will work for all the data types except for primitive types in which case you need to do type casting to Wrapper class types appropriately.

Something like this,

    public int[] returnArr()  {
       if(some condition)
         return SomeIntArray;
       else
         return null;
    }
 
    public int returnInt()  {
       if(some condition)
           return 2;
       else
           return (Integer)null;
    }

Hope that helps.

Syed.

I thought there might have been an exception for this but on the other hand i prefer to keep it simple, so that helps

Thanks both of you!