Question

Is it possible to (in some format), return a variable containing information from a function in PHP

eg.

function setuplogin($email,$pwd){
    if(!$email || !$pwd){ return $error = 'not possible'; }
}

So that on the page where it was called

<?php echo $error;?>

would work

EDIT:

It would not be possible to simply echo the function as this same function could also be set to
return $success = 'congrats'; and called on page with <?php echo $success;?>

Answer 1

It sounds like what you want is to be able to return multiple things: whether the function succeeded or failed, and a message to go along with it. You can do that by returning an array:

return array('success' => true, 'message' => 'well done');

The caller can do:

$result = setuplogin(...);
echo $result['message'];