Performing a non-local return in R
In most languages return
is a statement, but in R it is a function (in fact R does not really have statements, it only has expressions). This function-like behavior of return is useful for figuring out the order in which operations are performed, e.g., the value returned by return(1)+return(2)
tells us that binary operators are evaluated left to right.
R also supports lazy evaluation, operands are only evaluated when their value is required. The question of when a value might be required is a very complicated rabbit hole. In R’s case arguments to function calls are lazy and in the following code:
ret_a_b=function(a, b) { if (runif(1, -1, 1) < 0) a else b } helpless=function() { ret_a_b(return(3), return(4)) return(99) } |
a call to helpless
results in either 3 or 4 being returned.
This ability to perform non-local returns is just what is needed to implement exception handling recovery, i.e., jumping out of some nested function to a call potentially much higher up in the call tree, without passing back up through the intervening function called, when something goes wrong.
Having to pass the return-blob to every function called would be a pain, using a global variable would make life much simpler and less error prone. Simply assigning to a global variable will not work because the value being assigned is evaluated (it does not have to be, but R chooses to not to be lazy here). My first attempt to get what I needed into a global variable involved delayedAssign, but that did not work out. The second attempt made use of the environment created by a nested function definition, as follows:
# Create an environment containing a return that can be evaluated later. set_up=function(the_ret) { ret_holder=function() { the_ret } return(ret_holder) } # For simplicity this is not nested in some complicated way do_stuff=function() { # if (something_gone_wrong) get_out_of_jail() return("done") } get_out_of_jail=0 # Out friendly global variable control_func=function(a) { # Set up what will get called get_out_of_jail <<- set_up(return(a)) # do some work do_stuff() return(0) } control_func(11) |
and has the desired effect 🙂
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