Elegant ways to return multiple values from a function

Question

It seems like in most mainstream programming languages, returning multiple values from a function is an extremely awkward thing.

The typical soluti

Answer 1

By the way, Scala can return multiple values as follows (pasted from an interpreter session):

scala> def return2 = (1,2)
return2: (Int, Int)

scala> val (a1,a2) = return2
a1: Int = 1
a2: Int = 2

This is a special case of using pattern matching for assignment.

Answer 2

In C++ you can pass a container into the function so the function can fill it:

void getValues(std::vector<int>* result){
  result->push_back(2);
  result->push_back(6);
  result->push_back(73);
}

You could also have the function return a smart pointer (use shared_ptr) to a vector:

boost::shared_ptr< std::vector<int> > getValues(){
  boost::shared_ptr< std::vector<int> > vec(new std::vector<int>(3));
  (*vec)[0] = 2;
  (*vec)[1] = 6;
  (*vec)[2] = 73;
  return vec; 
}