Thinking about code

[andrewducker]

  If I have a method:
int DoSomething(string someStuff)
{
  //Do Stuff
  return 42;
}
then effectively I have an unnamed variable that gets set by the return statement, yes?

That being the case, wouldn't it be in some ways clearer to have an explicit, named, variable that gets set instead?

int DoSomething(string someStuff)
{
  //Do Stuff
  returnValue = 42;
}

where "returnValue" is a keyword that's used to return the value.

As it is I frequently end up with code that creates (or sets) a variable at various points through the code just so it can be returned at the end.  Making this an explicit part of the language just makes sense to me.

I assume there are languages out there that do this.

Comments

[skington.livejournal.com]

You could be writing in a language which either doesn't need to declare variables for pretty much everything, or can return more than one variable.

e.g. a fibonacci function in Perl.

{
my @fib = (0, 1, 1);
sub fib {
my ($num) = @_;
return if $num < 0 || $num != int($num);
return $fib[$num] if $fib[$num];
return fib[$num] = $fib[$num - 2] + $fib[$num -1];
}
}

No need for a return variable there.

[andrewducker]

True, but in an environment like my current one, with numerous people all changing the same codebase, static typing is very handy for making sure that someone hasn't broken something obscure.