Why do most programming languages only support returning a single value from a function?

Posted by M4N on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by M4N
Published on 2013-07-02T20:54:08Z Indexed on 2013/07/02 23:17 UTC
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Is there a reason or an explanation why functions in most(?) programming languages are designed to support any number of input parameters but only one return value?

In most languages, it is possible to "work around" that limitation, e.g. by using out-parameters, returning pointers or by defining/returning structs/classes.
But it seems strange, that programming languages were not designed to support multiple return values in a more "natural" way.

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