Arc Forumnew | comments | leaders | submitlogin
2 points by bOR_ 6035 days ago | link | parent

that's pretty close to perfect.

Anyway, I suppose that the programmer knows what the output is of a certain function, and not be surprised if a function churns out a list rather than two values ;).



3 points by bogomipz 6032 days ago | link

What if your function originally just returned one value, but at some later point you realize that a second value would be useful in some situations?

With multiple return values you can just extend it without breaking existing clients. If, on the other hand, you add a list wrapper around the returned values, all call sites must be changed to take car of the list.

-----

3 points by bOR_ 6026 days ago | link

That would be useful indeed. The flip side of the coin might be something that was sort of mentioned in 'on lisp'. If all functions return only one value (be it a list or a single value) by default, you can write a general memoize layer around functions that doesn't have to check how many multiple return values are returned.

I also noticed a carif function in arc. If you are worried about single values that will become lists in the future, you might start using carif in your current clients.

-----