Comments on: ActionScript 3: Void is now void

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 07:11:48 +0000

For everything but constructors, you will see a warning if a function doesn’t return a type. If it is invoked like it returns something, you’ll get an error.

While the warning is not an error, you pay for it in speed this time around, not just debugging time later on.

Besides, if you’re lazy or in a hurry, you can always do:

function getName():*
{
}

The * is now ‘no-type’. There is a word for nothing, null, which is something. Same thing for *; it’s now representational of returning no type… which is differnt than void, which means no returning of values.

By: Danny Miller

Danny Miller — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 07:04:43 +0000

I think functions should ALWAYS specify return types. AS is such a lienent language, and I think that the language should become more strict. I actually like seeing errors – I know it sounds weird – but then I know that my program has a better chance of running correctly and efficiently.

By: Derek Vadneau

Derek Vadneau — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:45:25 +0000

First off, thanks Jesse – that would have bit me quickly!

@eokyere:
As silly as it may sound, defaulting to void doesn’t sound like a good idea. While not everyone may agree with me, you may still want to have a function be able to return various datatypes. Not typing the return makes it possible to do that and to not return anything if you so desire. If you used void you would be locked into not returning anything, or using Object to indicate the return could be any datatype, but would have to return something.

I realize that sounds strange going into AS3, but that’s my take on why the default wouldn’t be void.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:07:37 +0000

It’s ECMAScript 4 compliant, so my guess is the ECMA 4 creators had a reason, they just aren’t Flash bloggers.

By: eokyere

eokyere — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 11:21:21 +0000

might seem trivial to most people, but i always thought the cap ‘V’ was ugly; but if we are making changes now, why ‘()’ doesn’t default to ‘():void’ … leaving ‘()’ communicates ‘nothingness’ better to me than ‘():void’ but i’m not sure what others think