Returning different types based on input parameters

[andrew cooke]

andrew cooke wrote:
> George Sakkis wrote:
>> That's more of a general API design question but I'd like to get an
>> idea if and how things are different in Python context. AFAIK it's
>> generally considered bad form (or worse) for functions/methods to
>> return values of different "type" depending on the number, type and/or
>> values of the passed parameters. I'm using "type" loosely in a duck-
>> typing sense, not necessarily as a concrete class and its descendants,
>> although I'm not sure if even duck-typing is endorsed for return
>> values (as opposed to input parameters).
> [...]
>
> you probably want to look up substitutability:
> http://www.google.cl/search?q=substitutability+principle

actually, this is better:
http://www.google.cl/search?q=substitution+principle

the idea being that if the "contract" for your function is that it returns
a certain type, then any subclass should also be ok (alternatively, that
subclasses should be written so that they can be returned when a caller
was expecting the superclass)

andrew