How to push and pop from a stack in Assembly mips?

Question

I want to create push and pop methods in mips assembly. Here's the code in java:

static int pop ()
{
    if (i == 0) {
        System.out.println ("Invalid Postfix");
        System.exit(1);
    }
    i--;
    return (p[i]);
} 

and

static void push (int result)
{
    if (i == MAX) {
        System.out.println ("Too many tokens");
        System.exit(1);
    }
    p[i] = result;
    i++;
}

So far, I've created the push method:

push:
    beq $s1, $s0, error_overflow
    sw $t2 , stack($t7)          # p[i] = result
    addi $t7, $t7, 4             # go to space for next int
    addi $s1, $s1, 1             # i++

    jr $ra

However I don't know how to translate the return (p[i]) statement in assembly. Are return values stored in $v0? Will I have to move the contents of $v0 to another registry? Any google searches on the subject have only confused me. Any help?

If my code in mips is confusing here's a cheat sheet:

$s0 = MAX
$s1 = stack pointer
$t7 = where I will store the numbers
$t2 = the number(result) that will be stored.

Answer 1

Taking the MIPS ABI as reference:

Are return values stored in $v0?

Yes.

Will I have to move the contents of $v0 to another registry?

No, that's not necessary. $vX registers are like the $tX registers, you don't need to back them up. It's the caller not the callee that needs to take care of backing up those registers if it cares about them.

PS: note that you can in fact use any other register or even memory for the return value if you want.