In a question about this on programmers.se, a slightly different history of the "Single Entry, Single Return" mantra is presented: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118793/4025 Essentially, it is argued that the practice that is warned about is to return to different places from the same function, not from different places within the function.
On a separate note, my take is that multiple returns are necessary to write readable understandable code quite often. Guard statements (either handling normal simple boundary cases, or throwing exceptions) at the beginning simplify logic and gives a clean reading of the code.
On a separate note, my take is that multiple returns are necessary to write readable understandable code quite often. Guard statements (either handling normal simple boundary cases, or throwing exceptions) at the beginning simplify logic and gives a clean reading of the code.