Question

This really isn’t an important question. I just wanted to know which method is more popular and whether there’s some sort of a de facto standard.

This,

function foobar
{
    int retVal = 0;
    try
    {
        retVal+=100;
    }
    catch 
    {
        //error handling code
    }
    return retVal;
}

Or this?

function foobar
{
    try
    {
        return 100;
    }
    catch 
    {
        //error handling code
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

It really depends upon what the function is doing. Use of a retVal variable is useful when then function need to go though a few operations to construct the return value. If the return value is more atomic than that I wouldn’t bother with the extra variable.