[erlang-questions] is there "return" in Erlang.

[Masklinn]

On 2011-02-28, at 15:57 , Attila Rajmund Nohl wrote:
> 
> Don't forget that "Erlang is a functional language" is a nice fairy
> tale, but in reality Erlang is used to control stuff or communicate
> with the outside world, so the side-effects are very important and
> many case clauses contain only an 'ok' atom (because something had to
> be returned, even if nobody cares).
This is the case for most functional languages (the subset of functional languages which are *pure* is pretty damn small, if you actually look it up). And even "pure" functional languages (e.g. Haskell) have to deal with the outside world at some point.

That sequential erlang is a functional language is a plain and simple fact, it just isn't a *pure* functional language. But that's a different bucket of filth.