Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost

Library 8. Tuple

How Does the Tuple Library Improve Your Programs?

• Multiple return values from functions

• Grouping of related types

• Ties values together

C++, like many other programming languages, allows a function to return one value. However, that one value can be of arbitrary type, which allows grouping multiple values as the result, with a struct or class. Although possible, it is often inconvenient to group related return values in such constructs, because it means defining types for every distinct return type needed. To avoid copying large objects in a return value, and to avoid creating a special type to return multiple values from a function, we often resort to using non-const reference arguments or pointers, thereby allowing a ...