[Bioperl-l] For CVS developers - potential pitfallwith "returnundef"

[Hilmar Lapp]

On May 31, 2006, at 12:03 PM, Lincoln Stein wrote:

> If the subroutine is documented to return "false" on failure, then  
> one must call
> return (or "return ()" ).

The problem seems to be that 'a value that evaluates to either true  
or false' and 'a [meaningful] value or undef' and 'a value or  
false' ('a value or no value) are not the same in perl. And what  
would/should one expect if the doc states 'true on success and false  
otherwise'?

Maybe the documentation should also be fixed to avoid any ambiguity.  
I.e., avoid documenting 'a value or false' because it may be  
ambiguous (not only) to the less proficient. 'True or false' should  
imply a value being returned.

Comments?

	-hilmar
-- 
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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