[Tutor] functions: use return or exceptions?

[Luke Paireepinart]

You should do both. Raise an exception in the exceptional case.

My general pattern is to return None if no results exist, return the results if they do exist, and raise an exception if I couldn't perform the function.

Eg. If I have a function that creates a list of users with a first name of bob, I'll return the users or None (or probably an empty list) but if the db connection is unsuccessful I'll let the exception it throws propagate back up from my function, or possibly trap and rethrow the exception.

Or if a db connection error shouldn't matter to the calling function, I just won't re raise the exception.

I may not actually do that in practice, depending on the implications, but that's my general idea usually.

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On Sep 23, 2010, at 2:47 PM, Wayne Werner <waynejwerner at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Alex Hall <mehgcap at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> A general coding question: is it better to use return(False) (or 0, or
> -1, or whatever) or to raise whateverError("oops")? Are there cases
> for each?
> 
> It depends on your prevailing philosophy - if you like the EAFP that prevails in python, it's better to raise an error. Usually that indicates that something has failed.
> 
> OTOH, a lot of people feel that using exceptions as control flow is bad practice - they're exceptional so they should only arise in exceptional case.
> 
> There may be performance issues, though I'm not familiar enough with that yet.
> 
> just my two bits,
> -Wayne
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