How to return one and only one value from a PowerShell function?

Question

I\'ve learned from this Stack Overflow question, that PowerShell return semantics are different, let\'s say, from C#\'s return semantics. Quote from the aforementioned quest

Answer 1

@Michael Sorens's answer is useful, but it suggests a design strategy that seems rather onerous. I don't want to have to separate out data processing functions from functions that report progress or diagnostic messages. Reading his blogpost, I found a less hacky work-around to the OP's question. Here's the key sentence from the blog post:

A PowerShell function returns all uncaptured output.

So what if we capture our output?

function Calculate
{
   $junkOutput = echo "Calculate"
   return 11
}

$result = Calculate

Now $result just contains 11, as intended.