>Hi Rich,
>
>SNIP
>>
>>On the other hand, I fully agree with you about multiple RETURNS. My worst nightmares were debugging code I wrote before I learned my lesson about that.
>
>I ask in earnestness... what is it that is bad about multiple RETURNs?
>Personally, I find them helpful in debugging and not at all hurtful. They save the amount of code that I have to go through to find the malfunction, which to me is always a plus. I would also think that you end up with extra coding to accomplish the feat, and such code solely to enable you to get to the single exit only adding complexity.
>
>Jim
I had a reasonably long program with several loops, scans, etc. Things started going bad. I don't remember the details - let's say it was a data type mismatch error. I found that the multiple RETURNS made it extremely hard to debug. I had to find all the exit points and set multiple break points. I couldn't set a watch on TYPE('lnReturn'). I wound up stepping through a lot of code before I eventually found the problem. I've had other problems with bypassing clean up code as I exit the module.

You can make the same arguement I made about LOOP, EXIT and GOTO. The problem isn't really with code, but how I used it. On the other hand, my experience is that it is much easier to produce errors with mulitple RETURNS than with LOOP/EXIT. About the only time I do it now is in simple utilities which don't mess with environment and can be resolved into simple DO CASE statements.

At any rate, that's my take on it.