Function giving unexpected result

Question

Could anyone explain why this function gives "None" at the end?

def displayHand(hand):
 """
 Displays the letters currently in the hand.
 For example:
 >>> displayHand({'a':1, 'x':2, 'l':3, 'e':1})
 Should print out something like:
 a x x l l l e
 The order of the letters is unimportant.
 hand: dictionary (string -> int)
 """
 for letter in hand.keys():
 for j in range(hand[letter]):
 print(letter,end=" ") # print all on the same line
 print() # print an empty line

• Francisco: There's an implicit return None at the end of every function, so if you don't return anything, it will return None
• OneCricketeer: Where does it give None? You aren't calling the function in this code.

Answer 1

The function is returning None because there is no other explicit return value; If a function has no return statement, the default is None.

• Bartek Biskupski: It does return what it should when called print(displayhand({'a':1, 'x':2, 'l':3, 'e':1}), which is "a x x l l l e" but adds None in the second line.

Answer 2

If a function doesn't return anything, then it automatically returns None.