VMS Help PASCAL, Statements, RETURN  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

  The RETURN statement passes control back  to  the  caller  of  a
  PROCEDURE,   FUNCTION,  PROGRAM,  or  module  initialization  or
  finalization section.  A RETURN statement  is  equivalent  to  a
  GOTO to a label placed just before the END of the body, and in a
  PROGRAM, has the effect of stopping the program

  Syntax:

  RETURN [ return-value ]

  Inside a FUNCTION, return-value specifies an  ending  value  for
  the  FUNCTION.   If  no return-value is provided, the last value
  assigned to the function identifier  is  used  as  the  function
  result.   The  return-value  type  and function type must be the
  same.

  Inside a PROGRAM, the return-value specifies an ending value for
  the PROGRAM.  If you do not provide a b

       return-value, Compaq Pascal uses the  value  1  on  OpenVMS
  systems.

  Inside a PROCEDURE, module  initialization  section,  or  module
  finalization section, Compaq Pascal generates an error.

1 - Example

  FUNCTION FindFirst(StartingPoint: INTEGER) : INTEGER;
    VAR i: INTEGER;
      BEGIN
        FOR i := StartingPoint TO MaximumNumber DO
          BEGIN
          IF Data[i] = Suitable THEN
            BEGIN
            AttributesOfDesiredData = Attributes[i];
            Subscript := i;
            RETURN i;
            END;
          END;
      END;

  The example  shows  the  usage  of  RETURN  ststement.   In  the
  example, a function searches through the array called "Data" for
  an element that matches  "Suitable".   When  it  finds  one,  it
  assigns  values  to  two global variables and executes a RETURN.
  Omitting the RETURN statement would make the  function  continue
  processing; it would assign values for the last suitable element
  instead of the first.