Question

Can a function return more than one value directly (i.e., without returning in parameters taken by-reference)?

Answer 1

No, but you can return a pair or boost::tuple which can contain multiple values.

In addition, you can use references to return multiple values like this:

void MyFunction(int a, int b, int& sum, int& difference);

You would call this function like this:

int result_sum;
int result_difference;
MyFunction(1, 2, result_sum, result_difference);

As Hogan points out, technically this isn’t returning multiple variables, however it is a good substitute.