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Postings from June 2008
Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: > * Tels <nospam-abuse@bloodgate.com> [2008-06-20 23:05]: > >> Also, I'd like to add that "return" at the end of a function is >> almost always pointless, too. >> > > Programs should be written for people to read and only > incidentally for machines to execute. > If your suggestion is that "return" improves readability, I disagree that the addition of "return" will universally improve the ability for a person to read the code. The "return" is more than just verbosity - it is a different statement with different behaviour. Perl programmers *must* be accustomed to code blocks returning the last value. This is how grep and map work. Any Perl programmer that cannot read this comfortably will have problems with these basic functions. If the programmer needs an explicit "return" to tell them what is happening, I would suggest it isn't about machine vs people but Perl vs C/Java. Cheers, mark P.S. That said - there are a lot of C/Java programmers out there, and I've been forced to use 'return' more liberally throughout my code, as the C/Java programmers just don't seem to be able to get it... -- Mark Mielke <mark@mielke.cc>Thread Next