On Sat, Jul 30, 2016, at 22:17, Chris Angelico wrote: > Yeah. The distinction means you have a fundamental API difference > between the procedures (which don't return anything) and the functions > (whose return values you mightn't care about).
Not really any more than between functions returning different types - which python doesn't distinguish in general. That some languages may spell it with a different keyword rather than a special type [such as C's void] doesn't mean the fundamental API difference is of a different kind. > It means you can't > upgrade something from "always returns None" to "returns the number of > objects frobbed" without breaking compat. Well, that's something you can't do in general in statically typed languages. (Once upon a time, C had a default return type of int, and allowed functions returning it to fall off the end or have a "return;" statement, but not anymore). This is ultimately just the static typing argument in miniature, confused by the fact that some languages declare them with a different syntax from other functions. > Conversely, if you decide > that any function can be called "as a procedure" (this is what REXX > does, for instance), then you've just merged the two types of callable > and distinguished them only in usage. > > Personally, I don't see any value to the distinction at all. > > ChrisA > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
