[Newbies] Should all methods return a value?

[Charles D Hixson]

Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
>   Charles,
>
>   
>> Todd Blanchard wrote:
>>     
>>> The rule is, if you don't return a value, then self is returned. 
>>> There's no such thing as a void message like in C++ or Java.
>>>
>>> Tell me what you want to do and I'll see if I can scare up some examples.
>>>
>>> On May 8, 2006, at 10:16 PM, Charles D Hixson wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I know that in some languages this matters, and in others it doesn't.
>>>> ...
>>>>         
>>> ...
>>>       
>
>   What Todd meant to say was: if you don't *explicitly* return a value
> with a '^' statement, the receiver (self) is returned.  Basically, all
> message-sending return some values.
>
>   
>> Returning self is fine.  I just wanted to know what would happen, so I
>> could do things properly.
>> (Actually, right not the methods would execute Object
>> shouldBeImplemented, so they probably won't really return anything...but
>> I was trying to plan for the future.)
>>     
>
>   I don't know if the following is relevant what you do, but here is a
> little fun fact.
>
>   Almost all errors and explicit runtime exceptions like
> #shouldNotImplemented are decorated break points.  If you push the
> "Proceed" button in the pink window called notifier, the execution
> continues.  Since Object>>shouldBeImplemented is implemented as:
> ---------
> shouldBeImplemented
> 	"Announce that this message should be implemented"
>
> 	self error: 'This message should be implemented'
> ---------
> without any explicit return, the receiver is returned and the
> execution continues.  Try an expression like following, evaluate the
> expression and "proceed".
>
> ----------
> Transcript show: (3 shouldBeImplemented + 4) printString.
> ----------
>
> -- Yoshiki
Good.  That is exactly the way I would want it to have been designed,
now that I think about it.