What is the purpose of the return statement?

Question

What is the simple basic explanation of what the return statement is, how to use it in Python?

And what is the difference between it and the print state

Answer 1

return means, "output this value from this function".

print means, "send this value to (generally) stdout"

In the Python REPL, a function return will be output to the screen by default (this isn't quite the same as print).

This is an example of print:

>>> n = "foo\nbar" #just assigning a variable. No output
>>> n #the value is output, but it is in a "raw form"
'foo\nbar'
>>> print n #the \n is now a newline
foo
bar
>>>

This is an example of return:

>>> def getN():
...    return "foo\nbar"
...
>>> getN() #When this isn't assigned to something, it is just output
'foo\nbar'
>>> n = getN() # assigning a variable to the return value. No output
>>> n #the value is output, but it is in a "raw form"
'foo\nbar'
>>> print n #the \n is now a newline
foo
bar
>>>