On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 19:57:53 -0700, Rustom Mody wrote: > I believe that you, Marko (and I) are saying exactly the same thing:
I believe that you and I are saying practically the same thing. > Wear language-lawyer hat: > Python has no procedures -- just functions which may return None Almost. Functions (or methods) can return None as a regular value, e.g. the re.match and re.search functions return a MatchObject if there is a match, and None if there is not. Here, the fact the function returns None is nothing special -- it could have return 0, or -1, or "Surprise!" if the function author had wanted, the important thing is that you use it as a function. Normally you call the function for it's return result, even if that result happens to be None. On the other hand, Python also has functions/methods which you call for their side-effects, not for their return result. In Pascal, Fortran and C, for example, the language provides a special type of subroutine that can only be called for it's side-effects. It is common to call these subroutines "procedures", and Python does not have them. We only have the convention that if a function is intended to be called for it's side- effects (a procedure), it should return None. > Wear vanilla programmer hat: > The concept (Pascal) procedure is simulated by function-returning-None Yes, agreed on this one. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
