The Book of JavaScript, 2nd Edition

Getting Information from Functions

You can also write functions that give information back to you. Consider the prompt() function:

var the_answer = prompt("What's your name?","Ishmael");

When a user types his or her name into the prompt box and clicks OK, the name goes into the variable the_answer. In programming parlance, you'd say that the function prompt() returns the words typed into the prompt box. The functions you write can return values as well. Figure 6-9 shows a very simple example of how to make a function return values.

Figure 6-9. A script with a simple function that returns a value

Line-by-Line Analysis of Figure 6-9

Most of the function ...