More the 1 return in a method, Good or Bad?

Question

Hello, quick question. Is it bad programming, and maybe even dangerous to have more that 1 return in a class. for example which of these code would be correct?
int value = 0;
if(one==true)
value = 1;
else if(two==true)
value = 2;
else if(three==true)
value = 3;
else if(four==true)
value = 4;
else if(five==true)
value = 5;
return retValue;
------------------------OR
f(one==true)
return 1;
else if(two==true)
return 2;
else if(three==true)
return 3;
else if(four==true)
return 4;
else if(five==true)
return 5;

Answer 1

As a general rule, yes. Returning a value from the
middle of a for-loop inside an if-statement would not
be good style. But I do find myself writing methods
that get the trivial cases out of the way first,
before getting into the real code.
Example:public String extractNames(NodeObject
node) {
if (node == null) return null;
// complex code follows on here
I agree with you in practice and in general. In fact, I also do the same thing although I would throw in a comment like //exit method if no valid processing possible due to null parameter or just invoke another method to do the complex logic part and have a member variable that is null or what is returned from the complex logic method.
I try to have one return for several reasons :
1) as listed above - for ease of debugging
2) multiple returns reminds me of the code that used "goto exit" to get out of a loop because the programmer could not figure out any better way to get out without overly complex code.
3) standards of only one point of entry and exit from a method.
The only reason I can see for the complex code not to be in another method (at least in the simple example above) would be for performance reasons.