Re: New VSI post on Youtube

On 8/20/2024 9:51 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 21:35:44 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 8/20/2024 9:25 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:47:36 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

Few languages support multiple return values.

>
Even in C and Fortran, a function can return a struct.

>
Yes. But that is returning a single value - just a composite value.

 The distinction between “multiple value” versus “single composite value”
is an artificial one specific to languages like Lisp. Python, for example,
is quite happy with constructs like
      a, b = struct.unpack("hh", b"\x00\x00\xff\xff")

If the language supports tuples or has a generic tuple class
or an other way to avoid creating a type for each
type combo of return values, then it is pretty much the same.
But with languages like C and Fortran there is a big difference.
Arne