If your functions are short enough and with a low level of cyclomatic complexity, it really shouldn't matter all that much. If it means that you have to wrap 2/

If your functions are short enough and with a low level of cyclomatic complexity, it really shouldn't matter all that much. If it means that you have to wrap 2/3rds of your function in an if just so that the single final return still works and that if then contains 20+ lines, then try to correct that in the first place. Having said that, I'm with the "guard statements" crowd, too, but it would probably be better if that were handled by other parts of the language syntax. Contracts, for example.