In places style question

General Usage
1

Suppose I have a function that performs an place transformation on the first variable

function f!(x,y)
    # code here
    x
end

This function can result in an error, so I would like to return a flag, variable, alerting me if there was a problem. Should the code now have a return? If it has a return, should it not be named with a !? As a simple example, consider:

function f!(x, y)
    flag = 0;
    for j in 1:length(x)
        x[j]-=y;
    end
    if(sum(x)<0)
        flag = -1;
    end
    x
    return flag
end
2

Well the ! indicates that the function modifies its arguments.https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/style-guide/#Append-!-to-names-of-functions-that-modify-their-arguments-1
So returning a variable shouldn’t change the name.

3

In that example, there is a return a. I thought such a function was to end with :

    a
end

and not return a.

4

There’s no difference to ending a function with a or return a (see the docs here). The convention with ! is that a function ending with ! modifies the first argument itself, e.g. set_first_to_1!(v::Vector) = v[1]=1 which is a function that mutates v by setting its first entry to 1.

6

The exclamation mark is just another character in the function name, it has no effects on the code.

7

As a matter of style and simplicity, rather than returning an error code or an error value or setting an auxiliary error variable – and the error is not something that is recoverable – throw(<some type of exception>) instead. That keeps function call results useful for additional calculation immediately.

throw an exception
using error()

1 Like
8

There are two things going on here:

  1. the ! is a style convention to indicate that the function modifies its argument(s),

  2. some of these function also return this argument, making code like

    f!(x, y, z) = (...; x) # x is the value
f(y, z) = f!(allocate_new_x(y, z), y, z)

    easy to write.

From your example, we don’t know if this is relevant for your context. If yes (ie you want an in-place and a functional version), then I would return (x, flag).

2 Likes
9

That third argument, the z, was not meant to mean anything else. I edited it out.