tutorial example

[john boy]

Can somebody tell me why you have to have "return result" in the below program as suggested in a beginner tutorial.  I ran the second listed program below without "return result" and they both give the same value in Python interpreter.  What does "return result" do?
 
def distance(x1, y1, x2, y2): 
  dx = x2 - x1 
  dy = y2 - y1 
  dsquared = dx**2 + dy**2 
  result = math.sqrt(dsquared) 
  print result
  return result 

 

 

def distance(x1, y1, x2, y2): 
  dx = x2 - x1 
  dy = y2 - y1 
  dsquared = dx**2 + dy**2 
  result = math.sqrt(dsquared) 
  print result




		
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