How do I return hundreds of values from a C++ function?

Question

In C++, whenever a function creates many (hundreds or thousands of) values, I used to have the caller pass an array that my function then fills with the output values:

Answer 1

You could return a smart pointer to a vector. That should work and no copy of the vector will be made.

If you don't want to keep the smart pointer for the rest of your program, you could simply create a vector before calling the function, and swap both vectors.