Can a function return more than one value? [duplicate]

Question

Can a function return more than one value directly (i.e., without returning in parameters taken by-reference)?

Answer 1

In the boost::tuple library, there's a function called tie that simplifies the process of getting information out of a returned tuple. If you had a function that returned a tuple of two doubles and wanted to load those into two local variables x and y, you could assign your function's return value to boost::tie(x, y).

Example:

#include <math.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <boost/tuple/tuple.hpp>

const double PI = 3.14159265;

boost::tuple<double, double> polar_to_rectangular(double radius, double angle)
{
    return boost::make_tuple(radius * cos(angle), radius * sin(angle));
}

int main()
{
    double x;
    double y;

    boost::tie(x, y) = polar_to_rectangular(4, (45 * PI) / 180);
    std::cout << "x == " << x << ", y == " << y << std::endl;

    return 0;
}