@return

@return documents what a function or method gives back, frequently with more precision than PHP's native return type hint allows — a shape, a literal value, a generic, or a type that depends on one of the arguments. It is one of the most commonly written tags, since even a fully typed signature rarely captures the exact structure callers can rely on.

"@return" <Type> [ <Description> ]

Parsing a @return tag produces a ReturnTag instance exposing $type — the parsed TypeNode — together with the $name and $description shared by every tag.

abstract class TypedTag extends Tag
{
    public TypeNode $type {
        get => $this->statement->type;
    }
}

final class ReturnTag extends TypedTag
{
    // inherits $name, $description, and the
    // computed $type property from TypedTag;
    // adds nothing of its own.
}

The @returns misspelling is also recognized — a fairly common typo in code — and it parses into the exact same ReturnTag as @return.

Defined by the PSR-19 draft @return proposal and phpDocumentor's own @return reference.

05 July 2026