idioms for returning multiple values in shell scripting

Question

Are there any idioms for returning multiple values from a bash function within a script?

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/assortedtips.html describes how to echo multipl

Answer 1

you can make use of associative arrays with you have bash 4 eg

declare -A ARR
function foo(){
  ...
  ARR["foo_return_value_1"]="VAR1"
  ARR["foo_return_value_2"]="VAR2"
}

you can combine them as strings.

function foo(){
  ...
  echo "$var1|$var2|$var3"
}

then whenever you need to use those return values,

ret="$(foo)"
IFS="|"
set -- $ret
echo "var1 one is: $1"
echo "var2 one is: $2"
echo "var3 one is: $3"