Is there really any formal distinction here in any language?

Certainly in Fortran at least there is. The declarative statements FUNCTION and SUBROUTINE define two different types of subprogram. The former returns a value and is invoked like

X = SIN(Y)

whereas the latter does not and is invoked like

CALL RANDOM_NUMBER(A)

They serve distinct purposes. HTH.

In reply to Re^5: I'm trying to consolidate my functions into subroutines by hippo
in thread I'm trying to consolidate my functions into subroutines by Peter Keystrokes

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