Question

I’m a PHP and ActionScript developer, and in some of my functions I use return to end it. Example:

private function lolsome(a:String):void
{
   if(a == "abs"){return void;}

   // function's code      
}

I could just place the function’s code into its else, but I prefer this way because in my opinion, this is more legible. I just want to know if this is considered a bad practice or something like that.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I would only consider it bad practice if you have returns inside long complicated functions because it can be harder for someone else to understand the algorithm when looking at it. However, it is bad practice to have big long functions in the first place (they should generally be split up into multiple smaller functions).

Overall, I would consider validating parameters and state at the beginning of a function and just returning to be good practice, not even just ok.

But still be careful not to litter a function with several different returns within the main logic.