The JavaScript exception "return not in function" occurs when areturn statement is called outside of afunction.

Message

SyntaxError: Illegal return statement (V8-based)SyntaxError: return not in function (Firefox)SyntaxError: Return statements are only valid inside functions. (Safari)

Error type

SyntaxError.

What went wrong?

Areturn statement is called outside of afunction. Maybe there are missing curly braces somewhere? Thereturn statement must be in a function, because it ends function execution and specifies a value to be returned to the function caller.

Examples

Missing curly braces

function cheer(score) {  if (score === 147)    return "Maximum!";  }  if (score > 100) {    return "Century!";  }}// SyntaxError: return not in function

The curly braces look correct at a first glance, but this code snippet is missing a{ after the firstif statement. Correct would be:

function cheer(score) {  if (score === 147) {    return "Maximum!";  }  if (score > 100) {    return "Century!";  }}

See also

• return