Terminating a Java Program

Question

I found out ways to terminate (shut-down or stop) my Java programs. I found two solutions for it.

1. using return;
   When I want to quit or

Answer 1

Because System.exit() is just another method to the compiler. It doesn't read ahead and figure out that the whole program will quit at that point (the JVM quits). Your OS or shell can read the integer that is passed back in the System.exit() method. It is standard for 0 to mean "program quit and everything went OK" and any other value to notify an error occurred. It is up to the developer to document these return values for any users.

return on the other hand is a reserved key word that the compiler knows well. return returns a value and ends the current function's run moving back up the stack to the function that invoked it (if any). In your code above it returns void as you have not supplied anything to return.