Re: db abstraction: pass by reference versus return

On Thu Jul 11, 2002 at 04:1630PM +0200, Lukas Smith wrote: > 1) The question is about if methods should always either return DB_OK or > an error object and any return data should be placed into a var that is > passed by reference. > > 2) Alternatively the method can either return the data or an error > object. ("the PEAR DB way"). For the records: That's my favourite way and I'm for sticking to it. The reasons for this are described below. > 3) Finally we can have a mix. If this is the option then we need to > decide what methods should work which way ("the Metabase way"). Mixing both ways will create inconsistency in the package, which generally is a bad thing. > I think this is a major useability question so I just wanted to ensure > that this is done the way people really want it to be. > > Somehow 1) seems like the comp sci way of doing things as it just feels > cleaner to me. :-) Yeah, may be, but IMHO 2) is just more intuitive, since people are used to work this way: Nearly all PEAR packages work this way right now. Using 1) in MDB/DB will cause a bit of inconsistency then because we'll have 99% of the PEAR packages using 2) and just 1% using 1). - Martin -- Martin Jansen - mail@martin-jansen.de http://martinjansen.com/