[Rd] Request: Suggestions for "good teaching" packages, esp. with C code

Geoff Jentry geoffjentry at hexdump.org
Tue Feb 15 22:55:30 CET 2011


On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, David Scott wrote:
>> 4. We don't want gratuitous use of "return" at the end of functions.
>> Why do people still do that?
> Well I for one (and Jeff as well it seems) think it is good programming 
> practice. It makes explicit what is being returned eliminating the 
> possibility of mistakes and provides clarity for anyone reading the code.

You're unnecessarily adding the overhead of a function call by explicitly 
calling return().

Sure it seems odd for someone coming from the C/C++/Java/etc world, but 
anyone familiar with R should find code that doesn't have an explicit 
return() call to be fully readable & clear.

-J



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