What are some best practices for designing PHP functions to return values instead of directly outputting them?

When designing PHP functions, it is considered a best practice to have functions return values instead of directly outputting them. This allows for better flexibility and reusability of the code, as the calling code can decide how to handle the returned value. To implement this, simply have the function return the desired value instead of using echo or print statements within the function. 

// Incorrect way of directly outputting value
function outputValue() {
    echo "Hello, World!";
}

outputValue(); // Outputs: Hello, World!

// Correct way of returning value
function returnValue() {
    return "Hello, World!";
}

echo returnValue(); // Outputs: Hello, World!

Keywords

PHP functions return values output design

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