Why methods can not return multiple values

Question

Just curious is there any technical limitation in having multiple return values for methods in languages like java, c, c++ or limitation is just by spec? In assembly language I understand callee can pop one value to register.

Answer 1

1. Because in the days of C there is/was a single register used to hold the return value.
2. Because if you need more values, you can just return a struct, reference (in Java/C#), or pointer.
3. Because you can use an out parameter.

Allowing multiple return values would add complexity, and it's simply worked around. There's no reason for it to be there. (Indeed, in C++ you can return a tuple (from TR1, C++11, or boost) which effectively is multiple return values)

Answer 2

Its by design, because there is no need to allow multiple values in return statement. You can always define a struct with all the needed members, and create an instance of the struct and return it. Simple!

Example,

struct Person
{
   std::string Name;
   int Age;
   std::string Qualification;
   //...
};

Person GetInfo()
{
    Person person;
    //fill person's members ...
    return person;
}

You can use std::pair, std::vector, std::map, std::list and so on. In C++0x, you can use std::tuple as well.