This discussion is archived in:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/demeter-method/LawOfDemeter/Smyth

Current contributors:
Smyth, Appleton, Gat and Lieberherr.
========================================

You are right:

"essential" was not the right word below.

"convenient" would be better.

You can always avoid return values by accumulating the result in
an argument.

The implementation of Demeter generates traversal methods without
return values. When a traversal is complete, a value may be returned.
According to Smyth's LoD, all methods, not only the generated ones,
should not have a return value.

See:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/sources/DemeterJava/examples
for generated code examples.

-- Karl

>From gat@jpl.nasa.gov Mon Jun  2 00:43:18 1997
>From: Erann Gat <gat@jpl.nasa.gov>
>
>
>You write:
>
>>Your [Smyth's] version of the LoD seems to be a sigificant improvement.
>
>Does that mean you are backing off your earlier statement:
>
>>In our view it is essential that methods can return values.
>
>Erann
>
>---
>Erann Gat      gat@jpl.nasa.gov     (818) 306-6176
>
>