To me, this is sort of one of those religious war topics with no correct answer. The argument against returning early essentially boils down to the fact that having one and only one point where a function can exit reduces the number of possible paths through your code, thus, in theory at least, reducing the chances for bugs. My personal style is to, in situations where it makes sense to return early do so, and in situations where it makes sense to limit to one return statement I do that.
