more return variables

I always find it odd that with C,C++ and Java you can pass in almost any number of arguments but only return one thing like this. public int functionamehere( int argument1, int argument2, String argument3 ) { return argument1 * argument2 ; } so you get int five = functionmehere( 3, 5, “hell”);

If you want to pass two things out you need to pass one as an argument. This creates problems in laguages/systems like CORBA and network RPC style languages – what is being passed as an argument and what is going to be altered.

What I want is a version of java/c/c++/ whatever where you can return more than one value. public (int result1 , int result2 ) functionNameHere( int agument1 , int argument2 , Stiring argument3)) { result1 = argument1 * argument2; result2 = (, argument1 – argument2 return ( result1, result2 ) ; } so you get

int fifteen, two ;

( fifteen, two ) = functionNameHere ( 3,5,”things”);

this simplifies things so anything that is an argument is being passed in and anything being returned is passed out. We can even say protected (int result)functionNameHere (int result){ return result ; }

that is we are going to pass the argument (possibly modified) back. With a little luck and a bit of guile we might even be able to use this to move register frames around more efficiently. This also means we avoid special means for values like null. I believe we use say NULL if we cannot open an file not because this is a good idea then what if I want to return a value that expains the error ? with multiple returns we get FILE *f; Int error ; (error , f ) = fopen(filename , “r”);