When/if to use boolean functions and switching to exceptions

[Bjartensen]

I have a (bad) habit of making every function bool and instead of returning variables I use non-const references.

I like it because if most of my functions are bool I can at all steps say

if (!some_func(&a,&b...)) return false;

to exit nicely out of functions.

It looks nice but I fear it's bad practice. If I want to keep the checking functionality I should perhaps switch to try/catch.

[Bjartensen]

Some of my bool functions are vacuous as well -- always returning true at the moment.