The initial assignment is used as a base case. Returns in a conditional statement are often used as an "escape" when you want to get out of a function (e.g. nul

The initial assignment is used as a base case. Returns in a conditional statement are often used as an "escape" when you want to get out of a function (e.g. null checks). This is purely a stylistic choice whereas using constant time lookup over conditional evaluation could be argued to have some performance impact (although in this case it would not be meaningful). That said, I don't see anything about this choice that needs to be defended.