Optionals vs Throwing functions

Question

Consider the following lookup function that I wrote, which is using optionals and optional binding, reports a message if key is not found in the dictionary

func          


        

Answer 1

If you are using Swift 2.0 you could use both versions. The second version uses try/catch (introduced with 2.0) and is thus not backwards compatible which might be a disadvantage to consider.

If there is any performance difference then it will be neglectable.

My personal favorite is the first one as it is straight forward and well readable. If I had to do maintenance of the second version I would ask myself why the author took a try/catch approach for such a simple case. So I would rather be confused...

If you had many complex conditions with many exit points (throws) then I would go for the second one. But as I said, this is not the case here.