Re: single return from function

 From chapter 9 "Simplifying conditional expressions":

    "I often find I use Replace Nested Conditional with Guard Clauses
    when I'm working with a programmer who has been taught to have only
    one entry point and one exit point from a method. One entry point is
    enforced by modern languages, and one exit point is really not a
    useful rule. Clarity is the key principle: if the method is clearer
    with one exit point, use one exit point; otherwise don't."

Does that clarify the issue?

El 11/12/2012 03:14 a.m., Willem Bogaerts escribi=F3:
>
> > On the internet, I found somewhere* that the Refactoring book
> > advocates for a single return from a function (thus, promoting
> > assigning values to a variable, such as result, and then say return
> > result; at the end).
> >
> > Is that true?
> >
> > I couldn't find it anywhere in the online catalog.
>
> I don't know the book by heart, but it makes a lot of sense. A return
> statement is effectively a "goto end" statement. And I hope we all know
> why gotos are bad.
>
> That said, it is a pain to extract code with more than one return
> statement into its own method, as it still means "goto end", but the
> endpoint has changed.
>
> But...
>
> Off course there are some things that may be bad, but only
> theoretically. As others have already remarked, a guard clause as a
> first statement is OK. Why? Simple: you can only extract the code with
> or without that first statement, and in both cases the behaviour is
> preserved. The other case is putting the return statement as the last
> statement in the function, as it makes the "goto" part of the meaning
> irrelevant. And that is where the single point of exit comes from.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Willem Bogaerts.
>
>=20



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