Is there some reason to avoid return statements

Question

Sometimes I see chunks of Scala code, with several nested levels of conditionals and matchings, that would be much clearer using an explicit return to exit from the function.

Answer 1

An explicit return breaks the control flow. For example if you have a statement like

if(isAuth(user)) {
 return getProfile(user)
}
else {
 return None
}

the control structure (if) is not finished, which is the reason why I argue it is more confusing. For me this is analogous to a break statement. Additionally Scalas 'everything is a value' principle reduces the need for using explicit returns which leads to less people using a keyword which is only useful for def statements:

// start 
def someString:String = return "somestring"

// def without return 
def someString = "somestring"

// after refactoring
val someString = "somestring"    

You see that the type annotation has to be added and when changing the def to a val it is required to remove the return.