“No-else-after-return” considered harmful

Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by xsmasher on Sunday August 30, 2009 @10:36PM (#795299)

I'm with Mozilla.

If I have a function with multiple conditions that cause me to return error / false / nil, I'd rather not have to nest them all in a series of if/then/else statements nor combine them into a single more-complicated if condition. I'd rather write them each as separate if-and-returns, followed by the real meat of the function.

function updatePlayers{

  if (charList is empty)
     return false;

  if (play is paused)
     return false;

  if (char is frozen)
     return false;

  //do stuff here
  return true;

}

I think this better spells out the "error" conditions.

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by natrius on Sunday August 30, 2009 @10:56PM (#795325)

Guard clauses are a particular case of if statements. I agree with omitting elses when using guard clauses. A blanket rule that eliminates elses after returns doesn't make any sense.

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by njharman on Sunday August 30, 2009 @11:55PM (#795395)

Blanket rules don't make sense.

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by philwelch on Sunday August 30, 2009 @10:55PM (#795323)

You'd be right, of course, but the original article concedes this point. He's talking about situations like

  if (a < b)
    return a
  return b

vs.

  if (a < b)
    return a
  else
    return b

  return ( (a < b) ? a : b)

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by neilc on Sunday August 30, 2009 @11:16PM (#795348)

What is the distinction between those two situations? (i.e. those in which the article "concedes the point"?)

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by nkurz on Monday August 31, 2009 @12:09AM (#795411)

Presuming this is a genuine question: the difference is whether one goes on to do more work after the 'guard' return, or whether one is just choosing which value to return.

I think the style guide is being silly, and there is no simple rule that says "always use an else" or "never use an else". I'd see "Avoid unnecessary indentation" as a better rule.

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by philwelch on Monday August 31, 2009 @12:50AM (#795456)

One's an early return due to error, one's a conditional return value.

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Re:“No-else-after-return” considered harmful by wlievens on Monday August 31, 2009 @05:10AM (#795628)

Error is the wrong term, because you don't return after an error condition, you raise an exception. Perhaps stop condition is more appropriate?

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