stylistic question -- optional return value

[Andrew Koenig]

Sebastian> Why not create an additional optional *argument* (say a list, or a
Sebastian> function), to which you optionally provide your debug information?

It's not debug information.  I used that term only as an analogy.

Anyway, I don't want to separate the optional information from the
rest of it because everything needs to go into the same data structure
eventually.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark