I don't see anything wrong with either one, altho I tend toward the first one. (In fact, what I might do would be to define a populated return hash first, then modify it as necessary -- kind of like the 2nd example -- but within the if...return structure of the first example). If I had to defend this, I'd point out:

In reply to Re: Control Flow - Multiple returns or nested conditionals by halfcountplus
in thread Control Flow - Multiple returns or nested conditionals by JediWizard

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