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Re: Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op?
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Re: Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op?


  • Subject: Re: Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op?
  • From: email@hidden
  • Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:56:08 +0200


On 18 Apr 2008, at 06:20, Adam P Jenkins wrote:

Of course (and as you have discovered), there are an awful lot of situations where a 'nil' return value is actually indicative of a serious problem -- something has failed that shouldn't have. And tracking it down can be a pain.

Exactly. And now that the convention of methods returning self no longer exists, it seems like there's no longer any advantage to this behavior.

Just invert the assumption: when you do care about things not being nil, encapsulate it in an "if" statement, otherwise don't bother. And document when a nil return value indicates a problem! IMHO this creates more readable code then the other way around. The examples of a possible dealloc implementation are trivial but to the point.


Like Mr. Bumgarner said it is all a matter of opinion. I always assumed the designers of the Objective-C language and Cocoa frameworks trust me to know what I'm doing while I find very elegant ways to shoot myself in the foot. I prefer this to a language and environment that treats me like a grunt and doesn't trust me every step of the way and I just end up with no hair left on my head.

Annard
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References: 
 >Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op? (From: Adam P Jenkins <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op? (From: Bill Bumgarner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Why is [nil aMessage] a no-op? (From: Adam P Jenkins <email@hidden>)

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