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I often talk to programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example:

if (condition)
 return 42;
else
 return 97;

"This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!"

int result;
if (condition)
 result = 42;
else
 result = 97;
return result;

How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented.

Of course, normally I would just write:

return (condition) ? 42 : 97;

But many programmers eschew the conditional operator and prefer the long form.

Where did this notion of "one return only" come from? Is there a historical reason why this convention came about?

I often talk to programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example:

if (condition)
 return 42;
else
 return 97;

"This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!"

int result;
if (condition)
 result = 42;
else
 result = 97;
return result;

How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented.

Of course, normally I would just write:

return (condition) ? 42 : 97;

But many programmers eschew the conditional operator and prefer the long form.

Where did this notion of "one return only" come from? Is there a historical reason why this convention came about?

I often talk to Java programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example:

if (blablabla)
 return 42;
else
 return 97;

"This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!"

int result;
if (blablabla)
 result = 42;
else
 result = 97;
return result;

How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented.

Of course, normally I would just write:

return (blablabla) ? 42 : 97;

But the conditional operator gets even less love among Java programmers. "It's incomprehensible!"

Where did this notion of "one return only" come from, and why do people adhere to it rigidly?

I often talk to programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example:

if (condition)
 return 42;
else
 return 97;

"This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!"

int result;
if (condition)
 result = 42;
else
 result = 97;
return result;

How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented.

Of course, normally I would just write:

return (condition) ? 42 : 97;

But many programmers eschew the conditional operator and prefer the long form.

Where did this notion of "one return only" come from? Is there a historical reason why this convention came about?