How do you return two values from a single method?

Question

When your in a situation where you need to return two things in a single method, what is the best approach?

I understand the philosophy that a method should do one t

Answer 1

Use var/out parameters or pass variables by reference, not by value. In Delphi:

function ReturnTwoValues(out Param1: Integer):Integer;
begin
  Param1 := 10;
  Result := 20;
end;

If you use var instead of out, you can pre-initialize the parameter.

With databases, you could have an out parameter per column and the result of the function would be a boolean indicating if the record is retrieved correctly or not. (Although I would use a single record class to hold the column values.)