What does void do in java?

Question

The return type—the data type of the value returned by the method, or void if the method does not return a value.

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/methods.html

Okay, then.. Here is my question:

public class EnumTest {
    Day day;

    public EnumTest(Day day) {
        this.day = day;
    }

    public void tellItLikeItIs() {
        switch (day) {
            case MONDAY: System.out.println("Mondays are bad.");
                         break;

            case FRIDAY: System.out.println("Fridays are better.");
                         break;

            case SATURDAY:
            case SUNDAY: System.out.println("Weekends are best.");
                         break;

            default:     System.out.println("Midweek days are so-so.");
                         break;
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EnumTest firstDay = new EnumTest(Day.MONDAY);
        firstDay.tellItLikeItIs();
        EnumTest thirdDay = new EnumTest(Day.WEDNESDAY);
        thirdDay.tellItLikeItIs();
        EnumTest fifthDay = new EnumTest(Day.FRIDAY);
        fifthDay.tellItLikeItIs();
        EnumTest sixthDay = new EnumTest(Day.SATURDAY);
        sixthDay.tellItLikeItIs();
        EnumTest seventhDay = new EnumTest(Day.SUNDAY);
        seventhDay.tellItLikeItIs();


    }
}

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/enum.html

The above code does not work without void.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.Error: Unresolved compilation problems: 
    The method tellItLikeItIs() is undefined for the type EnumTest

What did I miss out? Why is there a void in there? And it does return a string?

Answer 1

You mean the tellItLikeItIs method? Yes, you have to specify void to specify that the method doesn't return anything. All methods have to have a return type specified, even if it's void.

It certainly doesn't return a string - look, there are no return statements anywhere. It's not really clear why you think it is returning a string. It's printing strings to the console, but that's not the same thing as returning one from the method.