From: "Ralph \"PJPizza\" Siegler" <pjpizza@...>
Date: 2005-05-21T02:50:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Multiple return and parallel assignement

On Sat, May 21, 2005 at 01:30:13AM +0900, James Britt wrote:
> Eric Mahurin wrote:
> >I've never quite understood why most languages inherently
> >support returning only a single value 
> 
> 
> Conceptual elegance?
> 
> Seems cleaner to say that every expression returns an object, though 
> that the object may be a container for other objects, rather than assert 
> that expressions may return an unknown number of objects
> 
> 
> James
>

I also think it may be from the original mathematical idea of a "function', which only has 1 output value for a given set of inputs, which 3rd generation programming languages adopted as paradigm.  With multiple return values, more in the mindset of a "relation", an n to m mapping


Ralph "PJPizza"  Siegler