Wow, I have a split personality today.

I agree that error handling is the real bugbear of single-return. Special additional logic and/or an extra state variable are often required to make it work. It makes code less clear and sometimes even more error-prone. "Break out now" makes the most logical sense in a failure case.

But I see this example as different: there is one kind of result that could be created in one of two different ways. The if statement doesn't add any complexity to the code--you have to check for definedness somehow. Nor does it hurt clarity. Why is indenting so bad?

This is not to say that I object to your preferred solution. I think that's fine, too.

In reply to Re^4: return if defined by Anonymous Monk
in thread return if defined by uncoolbob

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