Actually the RequestDispatcher.forward and RequestDispatcher.include are just method calls to the other
servlet.
Control is indeed returned to the line after this line once it completes. The body of the code after the forward will still be processed and any unhandled exceptions will be thrown to requesting servlet.
The control is absolutely returned. However, there are some restrictions on what you can do afterwards -- in particular, you can no longer write to the response (it is assumed that the forwarded-to servlet took care of that already), so the only prudent thing to do is "return".
[ October 24, 2006: Message edited by: wise owen ]