Why java method does not support multiple return values? [duplicate]

Question

While working with Java Applications, I feel most of the times one question : Why Java doesn't support multiple return values of methods?

I know that people who designed Java, must have done thinking about this topic but I didn't get any answer or particular reason while thinking myself.

Answer 1

If all the values are of the same type, you can just return an array of them:

public String[] myMethod{} {}

If they are not, they you have multiple options:

The ugly one is to cast everything into an Object and return either:

public Object[] myMethod{} {}

or

public List<? extends Object> myMethod() {}

The problem with these implementations is you really don't know what's what in the object/list unless you look at the method implementation. So it can be a shortcut if you know noone else is going to use this.

There's cleaner but a bit more time consuming. But it's usually a good practice because carries more information:

Say you want to return two values, an int and a String. You need to design an object that represents those two (or more values):

public class MyResponse {
    public String myString;
    public int myInt;
}

And return an instance of MyResponse. Note that here I made the attributes public. There are multiple schools of thoughts around this. Some will prefer to make them private and add getter/setter methods. That's homework for you.