Return Values: What Comes Out
You may have noticed that some methods give you something back when you call them. For example, you say gets returns a string (the string you typed in), and the + method in 5+3 (which is actually 5.+(3)) returns 8. The arithmetic methods for numbers return numbers, and the arithmetic methods for strings return strings.
It’s important to understand the difference between a method returning a value (returning it to the code that called the method), and your program outputting text to your screen, like puts does. Notice that 5+3 returns 8; it does not print 8 on your screen.
So, what does puts return? We never cared before, but let’s look at it now:
| 1: | return_val = puts "This puts returned:" |
| 2: | puts return_val ... |
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