return-in-generator (B901)

Preview (since v0.4.8) · Related issues · View source

Derived from the flake8-bugbear linter.

This rule is unstable and in preview. The --preview flag is required for use.

What it does

Checks for return {value} statements in functions that also contain yield or yield from statements.

Why is this bad?

Using return {value} in a generator function was syntactically invalid in Python 2. In Python 3 return {value} can be used in a generator; however, the combination of yield and return can lead to confusing behavior, as the return statement will cause the generator to raise StopIteration with the value provided, rather than returning the value to the caller.

For example, given:

from collections.abc import Iterable
from pathlib import Path


def get_file_paths(file_types: Iterable[str] | None = None) -> Iterable[Path]:
    dir_path = Path(".")
    if file_types is None:
        return dir_path.glob("*")

    for file_type in file_types:
        yield from dir_path.glob(f"*.{file_type}")

Readers might assume that get_file_paths() would return an iterable of Path objects in the directory; in reality, though, list(get_file_paths()) evaluates to [], since the return statement causes the generator to raise StopIteration with the value dir_path.glob("*"):

>>> list(get_file_paths(file_types=["cfg", "toml"]))
[PosixPath('setup.cfg'), PosixPath('pyproject.toml')]
>>> list(get_file_paths())
[]

For intentional uses of return in a generator, consider suppressing this diagnostic.

Example

from collections.abc import Iterable
from pathlib import Path


def get_file_paths(file_types: Iterable[str] | None = None) -> Iterable[Path]:
    dir_path = Path(".")
    if file_types is None:
        return dir_path.glob("*")

    for file_type in file_types:
        yield from dir_path.glob(f"*.{file_type}")

Use instead:

from collections.abc import Iterable
from pathlib import Path


def get_file_paths(file_types: Iterable[str] | None = None) -> Iterable[Path]:
    dir_path = Path(".")
    if file_types is None:
        yield from dir_path.glob("*")
    else:
        for file_type in file_types:
            yield from dir_path.glob(f"*.{file_type}")