Strictly speaking, a function can only return one value, but if the value is a tuple, the effect is the same as returning multiple values. For example, if you want to divide two integers and compute the quotient and remainder, it is inefficient to compute x/y and then x%y. It is better to compute them both at the same time.
The built-in function divmod takes two arguments and returns a tuple of two values, the quotient and remainder. You can store the result as a tuple:
>>> t = divmod(7, 3)>>> print t(2, 1)
Or use tuple assignment to store the elements separately:
>>> quot, rem = divmod(7, 3)>>> print quot2>>> print rem1
Here is an example of a function that returns a tuple:
def min_max(t):return min(t), max(t)
max and min are built-in functions that find the largest and smallest elements of a sequence.
min_max computes both and returns a tuple of two values.
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