How do I return multiple values from a function?

Question

After the lengthy preamble, comes the inevitable question. Which method (do you think) is best?

I've typically found myself going the dictionary route because it involves less set-up work. From the perspective of a type, however, you might be better off going the class route, since that may help you avoid confusing what a dictionary represents.

On the other hand, there are some in the Python community that feel implied interfaces should be preferred to explicit interfaces, at which point the type of the object really isn't relevant since you're basically relying on the convention that the same attribute will always have the same meaning.

So, how do -you- return multiple values in Python?

Answer 1

To return multiple values from a function:-

import collections 

Point = collections.namedtuple('Point', ['x', 'y']) 

p = Point(1, y=2) 

p.x, p.y 

1 2 

p[0], p[1] 

1 2

To know more about this you can have a look at the following video tutorial:-

Answer 2

You just need to return a collection of some sort, like a dictionary or a list. You can leave off the extra syntax and just write out the return values, comma-separated. 

Note: this will technically return a tuple.

def f():

    return True, False

x, y = f()

print(x)

print(y)

Result:

True

False