[BangPypers] Return values

[Arun Ravindran]

Hi Noufal,

Looks like we already have different style preferences here. So let me
throw some more to the mix :)

Wearing a functional programmers cap, I would suggest creating one get_stats()
function that always returns the stat values as a list. Then, there could
be potentially several Higher Order Functions like stats_avg() or
stats_median() which work on a list of Stats objects and returns a single
Stats object or even a literal value.

Thinking in a slightly different object oriented style, the return value
could be a Stats object. It could have a raw_values() and consolidate()
methods. Derived classes can override the consolidate() method to support
various consolidation algorithms.

Depends on the style you follow in the rest of the API as well :)

Cheers,
Arun

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Noufal Ibrahim KV <noufal at nibrahim.net.in>
wrote:

>
> I've recently come across something that I'd like some comments on. It's
> a stylistic issue so not something that there's an objective answer
> for. Nevertheless.
>
> I have a function that gets some statistics from some source and returns
> it to the user as a Stats object. Let's call it get_stats. This has a
> parameter `consolidate`. If consolidate is True, it will combine all the
> statistics and return just one Stats object. If not, it will return a
> list of Stats objects.
>
> The problem now is that this function sometimes returns a single thing
> and some times a list. I don't like this since I have to alter my
> calling code to handle this.
>
> I'm surprised that I've never hit this before and I'm not really sure
> how to handle it.
>
> Comments?
>
>
>
> --
> Cordially,
> Noufal
> http://nibrahim.net.in
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