[TIP] Test runner checking for absence of 'None' in all functions (pytest)

[holger krekel]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 22:27 +0100, David wrote:
> Dear fellow Pythonistas,
> 
> I am currently reading a book [1] that gives the following coding tip:
> "Prefer	Exceptions to Returning	None". You can see code examples out of
> the book further below.

There are in my experience also good examples of returning None.
Sometimes it's nicer on the caller side to not have to handle
exceptions.  Also some_dict_object.get(key) returns None if the key is
not in the dictionary.  Then again, not hiding exceptions is a good idea
as well in many cases like in the divide function below.

> As I am teaching myself pytest these days, I would like to write a test
> runner (which eventually is to be part of a Continuous Integration
> setup) that fails should it detect any function that returns None.
> 
> My problem is that I would like to limit the test runner to look
> *inside* of functions (and/or other structures).
> 
> I can very well write a parser that checks, per line, if the words
> "return" and "None" are used. But that would cover the entire file in
> question, never mind its structure.

FWIW "return None" can only appear in a function.  At module level it
will raise a SyntaxError.  Also functions can implicitely return
None if they don't have a return statement in all code paths.

> Do you have any ideas how to check the 'absence of None' within
> functions and the like?

Not completely sure but maybe checking at the bytecode level
might work better.

holger

> I am looking forward to your suggestions!
> 
> Greetings and thanks,
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> 
> # bad code
> def divide(a, b):
>     try:
>         return a / b
>     except ZeroDivisionError:
> 	return None
> 
> 
> # good code
> def divide(a, b):
>     try:
> 	return a / b
>     except ZeroDivisionError as e:
> 	raise ValueError(‘Invalid inputs’) from	e
> 
> 
> [1] Brett Slatkin (2015), Effective Python, Addison-Wesley
> 
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