Most of you have probably bumped into a situation, where multiple things must be in check and in certain order before the application can proceed, for example in a very simple case of creating a listening socket (socket, bind, listen, accept etc.). There are at least two obvious ways (don't take this 100% verbatim): if (1st_ok) { if (2nd_ok) { ... or if (!1st_ok) { return; } if (!2nd_ok) { return; } ... Have you ever though of anything smarter, do you prefer one over the other of the above, or do you (if the language provides for it) use exceptions?