"return" in def

Roger rdcollum at gmail.com
Sun Dec 28 18:11:53 EST 2008


On Dec 28, 5:12 pm, John Machin <sjmac... at lexicon.net> wrote:
> On Dec 29, 7:06 am, Roger <rdcol... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > Curious. When I see a bare return, the first thing I think is that the
> > > author forgot to include the return value and that it's a bug.
>
> > > The second thing I think is that maybe the function is a generator, and
> > > so I look for a yield. If I don't see a yield, I go back to thinking
> > > they've left out the return value, and have to spend time trying to
> > > understand the function in order to determine whether that is the case or
> > > not.
>
> > > In other words, even though it is perfectly valid Python, bare returns
> > > always make the intent of the function less clear for me. I'm with Bruno
> > > -- if you have a function with early exits, and you need to make the
> > > intent of the function clear, explicitly return None. Otherwise, leave it
> > > out altogether.
>
> > > --
> > > Steven
>
> > To me this is the soundest argument.  Thanks for the advice.  I think
> > I'll follow this as a rule of thumb hereafter.
>
> Please don't. Follow MRAB's advice, with the corollary that a
> generator is forced by the compiler to be a "procedure" in MRAB's
> terminology.

Yup, this is what I took away from this discussion.  Thanks!



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