Multiple Return Types

Question

haven't been around in a while, so I thought I'd stir up some comments with a suggestion for a new feature in Java, which I'm sure has been suggested at some point, but I can't remember seeing it talked about, so here goes:
Multiple Return Types:
public String, int getStateInfo(String abbrev) {
   if("nj".equalsIgnoreCase(abbrev)) {
      return "New Jersey", 11408042;
   // ... and other states...
   return null, -1;
String name, int population = getStateInfo("nj");
System.out.println("The population of " + name + " is " + population + ".");Yes yes, I know. Create a StateInfo object with the fields needed. Still, I think that could be interesting.

Answer 1

apart from it getting ugly with more than twoparameters
What? How is this ugly? ;-)
public String, int, String, Color, String, String
getStateInfo(String abbrev) {
return name, population, stateFlower, stateColor,
or, stateAnimal, governorsName;
there no indication on what the return valuesrepresent.
Well, I guees the API docs would have to speak for
themselves. Or better method naming... In that
sense, it's no different then now. I could write a
method "getStateName()" and return totally different.
public String, int getStateNameAndPopulation(String
abbrev) {...
I used to like "tuples" when I studied The Tom Programming Language (that's how he calls them), as every CS student is a bit of a "featurist"... Now that I came to develop 40 hours a week and to love Java's simple and powerful expressiveness, I tend to find such constructs overly ugly to be avoided as possible... a matter of personal taste, too, I suppose...