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When looking through Python code on GitHub, I've seen several examples of a return with no value. For example:
if hasattr(self, 'moved_away'):
return
# and here code continues
What does the empty return mean?
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As other have answered, the result is exactly the same, None is returned in all cases. The difference is stylistic, but please note that PEP8 requires the use to be consistent: Be consistent in return statements. Either all return statements in a function should return an expression, or none of them should.
Without the final return, the flow of control reaches the end of the function without hitting a return statement, so the default value of None is returned.
If you want to return a null function in Python then use the None keyword in the returns statement. Example Python return null (None). To literally return 'nothing' use pass , which basically returns the value None if put in a function(Functions must return a value, so why not 'nothing').
An empty function is a function that does not contain any statement within its body. If you try to write a function definition without any statement in python – it will return an error ("IndentationError: expected an indented block").
It means it will return None. You could remove the return and it would still return None because all functions that don't specify a return value in python will by default return None.
In this particular case it means the code will go no further if the object has the attribute 'moved_away', without the return any code below would be evaluated even if the if statement evaluated to True.
So you can think of it as being similar to a break statement in a loop when you have a condition you want to exit the loop on, without the break the code would continue to be evaluated.
if hasattr(self, 'moved_away'): # if this is True we return/end the function
return
# if previous statement was False we start executing code from here
return exits the current function.
So, here it will stop the execution & return None.
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