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Is there a name for this anti-pattern/code smell?

Asked 2008-09-16T14:10:30.087
19

Let me start by saying that I do not advocate this approach, but I saw it recently and I was wondering if there was a name for it I could use to point the guilty party to. So here goes.

Now you have a method, and you want to return a value. You also want to return an error code. Of course, exceptions are a much better choice, but for whatever reason you want an error code instead. Remember, I'm playing devil's advocate here. So you create a generic class, like this:

class FunctionResult<T>
{
    public T payload;
    public int result;
}

And then declare your functions like this:

FunctionResult<string> MyFunction()
{
    FunctionResult<string> result;
    //...

    return result;
}

One variation on this pattern is to use an enum for the error code instead of a string. Now, back to my question: is there a name for this, and if so what is it?

design-patterns anti-patterns
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2 Answers

1

How about the "Can't decide whether this is an error or not" pattern. Seems like if you really had an exception but wanted to return a partial result, you'd wrap the result in the exception.

answered 2008-09-16T14:13:51.747
1

If you don't want to use exceptions, the cleanest way to do it is to have the function return the error/success code and take either a reference or pointer argument that gets filled in with the result.

I would not call it an anti-pattern. It's a very well proven workable method that's often preferable to using exceptions.

answered 2008-09-16T14:34:09.187

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