Newbies: Re: Returning none

[Phil Hunt]

In article <37CF5499.BA24C33E at prescod.net>
           paul at prescod.net "Paul Prescod" writes:
> I want to make the empirical point that I brought up this None issue
> when two different co-workers ran into the problem in three different
> contexts in one statistically unlikely week. 
> 
> #1. a=list.sort("abc"): "None object has no attribute foo" 

I think in this kind of case there is room for 2 functions: one
that sorts the list; another that leaves the list unchanged, and
returns a sorted version of the list. Perhaps these could be:

i.    list.sort()
ii.   result = list.sorted()

> #2. alert( print_traceback() ): "None"
> 
> #3. Forgetting to return a value.

I quite like the feature of Smalltalk where if you don't specify
the return vcalue, it returns the object that was the receiver of
the method.

-- 
Phil Hunt - - - - - - - - -  philh at vision25.demon.co.uk
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