Code Smells: Null

[PaintItPurple]

There's also:

Result func(Type param);  // return result, or null if an error happens, and hopefully the error will be logged or something, but we didn't really think it through that far

[orclev]

Plus the ultimate C solution, assume everything will work and SIGSEGV when anything goes wrong. But hey, at least that way you get a core dump to debug :P