Problem Detail: I would like to ask a question about multiple return values, why this construct is not preferrable in programming languages (conceptual and/or technical difficulties). I’ve heard something about stack frames and how they reserve memory for return value and variable return values could make this problematic, but if someone could explain this better, this would be much appreciated.
In conctanetative languages (like FORTH), having multiple return values from a function is a common and very useful thing, and I imagine something like this in java/c-like languages would be useful too (a very basic example):
In conctanetative languages (like FORTH), having multiple return values from a function is a common and very useful thing, and I imagine something like this in java/c-like languages would be useful too (a very basic example):
x, y = multRet(5); multret(int x) { return x+1; return x+2; exit; } To clarify: I am not asking how to return multiple values (this is a known question with known answers), but I want to get a clarification about why this practice is not common in programming languages.
Asked By : artemonster
Answered By : Yuval Filmus
Functions are traditionally thought of as returning a single value – in math. Of course several values form a tuple, but oftentimes in math we are dealing with real-valued functions. I suspect that this origin of functions is the reason why multiple return values are not so common. That said, it’s easy to emulate them in several ways (by returning a tuple, or by having several output parameters, i.e. ones passed by reference), and some common modern languages (such as Python) natively support this construction.
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Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/29317
