What does void do in java?

Question

The return type—the data type of the value returned by the method, or void if the method does not return a value.

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Answer 1

When the return type is void, your method doesn't return anything.

Look again at your code: There's no return in that method. You print to the console and exit.

Answer 2

Void doesn't return anything; it tells the compiler the method doesn't have a return value.

Answer 3

Void: the type modifier void states that the main method does not return any value. All parameters to a method are declared inside a prior of parenthesis. Here String args[ ] declares a parameter named args which contains an array of objects of the class type string.

Answer 4

void means it returns nothing. It does not return a string, you write a string to System.out but you're not returning one.

You must specify what a method returns, even if you're just saying that it returns nothing.

Technically speaking they could have designed the language such that if you don't write a return type then it's assumed to return nothing, however making you explicitly write out void helps to ensure that the lack of a returned value is intentional and not accidental.

Answer 5

The reason the code will not work without void is because the System.out.println(String string) method returns nothing and just prints the supplied arguments to the standard out terminal, which is the computer monitor in most cases. When a method returns "nothing" you have to specify that by putting the void keyword in its signature.

You can see the documentation of the System.out.println here:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/io/PrintStream.html#println%28java.lang.String%29

To press the issue further, println is a classic example of a method which is performing computation as a "side effect."

Answer 6

You mean the tellItLikeItIs method? Yes, you have to specify void to specify that the method doesn't return anything. All methods have to have a return type specified, even if it's void.

It certainly doesn't return a string - look, there are no return statements anywhere. It's not really clear why you think it is returning a string. It's printing strings to the console, but that's not the same thing as returning one from the method.