Thread: return;

I'm really sorry, this question is really basic and I expect its already been answered but when I try searching for anything to do with 'return;' I invariably get thousands of results.

Obviousley when you return 'something' in a statement it returnes that 'something'. But I have a statement in my text book as follows:

public void run() {
   while (true) {
      if (socket == null) {
      return;
      }
   }
 
...
}
 
}

What is being returned?

In your use of return there is no value being returned. The return statement exits from the method and "returns" to the caller.

Thanks Norm, So it is effectively being used as an 'escape'.

Where did you get the word "escape" from? What does it mean in this context?
For me, the return statement returns the execution flow to the caller.