Hall of Famer's PHP Tutorials: Chapter 1 - PHP syntax

[Hall of Famer]

Well a return value is quite simple to understand. Assume you have a math function f(x) = x^2 - 4x + 3, the x value is the input value, while the f(x) value is the return value. Print and echo are technically PHP functions, but of special type since you do not need to write a parenthesis to enclose anything inside these functions. Moreover, these functions' return values are themselves. This is pretty much like f(x) = x in math, in which f(x) has exactly the same value as x.