[erlang-questions] Some functions must return values other may do so...

[Fred Hebert]

On 08/16, Loïc Hoguin wrote:
>It's not just about what you return!
>
>Imagine you are validating input.
>
>There are two ways to go with validating input:
>
>* You detect all errors and display a nice message to the user
>* You crash on the first error and stop there (no need to do more if 
>you do machine to machine)
>
>The functions do the same thing, validate input, take the same 
>arguments, and return the validating input in a usable format.
>
>And you don't have to reimplement everything twice! It's just the 
>*interface* that has two functions. You can have a special argument for 
>this (or a special value in place of your error accumulator) inside the 
>private function that implements the input validation.
>

Yeah, there I tend to pick one and document what it does. How often do 
you end up validating at multiple points in the program and do it in 
different ways every time?

If you need to re-validate input multiple times or places, I'd instead 
recommend to move your validation to the edge of the system where it an 
be done once and for all.

I guess I can't understand the need as in ~6-7 years programming Erlang, 
I have never encountered the need to do that in a way that couldn't be 
fixed by that way of doing things.