Defying the return type

[aatwo]

Is there a way for a method to not return anything if a certain condition is met, despite the fact that I have specified an integer return type for that particular method?

[AlaNio]

return null ?

[aatwo]

null is not of type int and so throws up an error

[AlaNio]

it shouldn't do. are you mapping the result to a variable of type int ?

[aatwo]

nope I'm not mapping it at all.

Don't worry about it but I have decided to just throw an exception.

[agent_x91]

No, there's no way of "defying the return type" as you put it. If the return type is a certain type, you must return a variable of that type. If you want to return an int, you have two options:

Either return -1 as the int, and handle a -1 as if nothing was returned, or make it return an Integer instead of an int, and you can return null legally.