Re: RE: Return or not to return, that is the question

----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Davey" <rich@corephp.co.uk>

That is all my original thread was ever really asking - I was just curious what other people thought about returning from functions that don't actually require a return value. So far the responses have been pretty varied, from the (somewhat blinkered) 'how can a function never return something?', to 'yes I always return' to 'no I just let it run out'.

My rule is to write what you mean, and if you don't mean to return anything valid or worth anything, just don't. If you explicitly put a return it should be for a reason, whatever you return should be meaningful. If I find a 'return true' at the end of a piece of code, I will check if there is any condition where it returns false, because I will assume that the return true is significant and so should be its obvious alternative. I would also wonder why the caller doesn't use that return value or if it does, why is there no 'else' part. In a similar line, I use 'null' in databases when I mean 'I have no valid information for this field'. Basically, the idea is to be clear in what you mean. If you put a return it should be because you mean to return something. If you mean you don't know, use 'null', don't default to zero or any other implausible value for that field. This kind of arbitrary conventions dilute the self-documenting value of well-written code, quite the opposite, they would need to be documented themselves to avoid missinterpretations. Satyam