Question

I was training a new developer the other day and realized I don’t know the actual term for ‘catching’ a return value in a variable. For example, consider this pseudocoded method:

String updateString(newPart) {   string += newPart;   return string; } 

Assume this is being called to simply update the string – the return value is not needed:

updateString('add this'); 

Now, assume we want to do something with the returned value. We want to change the call so that we can use the newly updated string. I found myself saying ‘catch the return value’, meaning I wanted to see:

String returnedString = updateString('add this'); 

So, if you were trying to ask someone to make this change, what terminology would you use? Is it different in different languages (since technically, you may be calling either a function or a method, depending on the language)?

Answer 1

assign the return value to a variable?