What's the best way to return a pair of values in Java? [duplicate]

Answer 1

I have been told by experts that when faced with the question of pairs, one of two things is true:

1. You need to rethink your structure (this blunt answer doesn't help anyone)
2. You need to build your own class to hold the pair

I would suggest that the second case is not all that abnormal. However, if what you are doing seems too trivial for introducing a new class, then using a Map could work, as others have suggested. If you are simply sending a single response back, then a Map seems like a bit much.

If a list of pairs sounds like it would work, and you need to maintain order, you could try a LinkedHashMap so that order is maintained.