Blog / Go Language Spec

Returning from a function without a return value

July 26, 2024

Let’s continue our discussion of return statements by looking at functions that don’t actually return anything…

Return statements

…

In a function without a result type, a “return” statement must not specify any result values.

func noResult() {
	return
}

Simple enough. Within functions without return values, return must not include any result values.

But that doesn’t actually mean the example code you see is good code.

In the noResult function, the return statement is actually completely redundant, because the function simply ends on the next line.

So for a function with no return values, a return statement is only necessary if you want to return early.

func warnIfTooLate() {
	if time.Now().After(deadline) {
		fmt.Println("It's too late!")
		return
	}
	fmt.Println("You still have time")
}

In fact, there are linters, such as gosimple (also part of golangci-lint) which will complain if you have redundant return statements at the end of such functions. I always recommend linting for such things, as I believe it makes one’s code more readable.

Quotes from The Go Programming Language Specification Language version go1.22 (Feb 6, 2024)

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Return statements, conclusion

Just a couple small notes before we move on from return statements… Return statements … Regardless of how they are declared, all the result values are initialized to the zero values for their type upon entry to the function. A “return” statement that specifies results sets the result parameters before any deferred functions are executed. For the most part, this can be considered trivia, for Quiz night at your next Go meetup.

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