guglhupf.net

I have made once this this blog entry, and now I have changed my opinion a bit: A method should never return null if this indicates an error state.
e.g. Here is some code that should throw an exception instead of returing null:

public SomeObject createSomeObject() {
  try {
    //... some code
    return someObject  
} catch (Exception ex) {
    return null
  }
}

This code is fine, because if nothing is found is a valid state and not an error:

public SomeObject find(...) {
  if (nothingIsFound) {
    return null;
  } else {
     ...
  }
}