When you do in fact want your function to return something and pass information back to the rest of your program, C++ has you covered. Just like there are many variable types, there are many different return types for functions.

A function can return most data types we’ve covered, including double, int, bool, char, std::string, and std::vector.

std::string always_blue() {

  return "blue!\n";

}

Note: The return statement is the last line of code that a function will execute. For example:

std::string always_blue() {

  return "blue!\n";

  std::cout << "Returned blue!";

}

The final line will not execute because a value has already been returned. So "Returned blue!" won’t be printed to the terminal.