Question

I have one Main class and VOCollection Class.
in main class there is a method called getStatus(), from this method only i am getting some status(true,false), if the status is true, i need to return a collection.
at present i have two ideas, but both are expensive.

1. return map, it’s expensive because setting Boolean for collection make confusion in code, and only one Boolean value is enough (but we are returning multiple).

2. creating an instance variable in VOCollection class, and having getter & setter to get & set the Boolean value. this is also expensive. (creating a variable in another class).

give me less expensive solution.

Answer 1

There are a number of ways to do this:

• Return null to indicate that there is nothing present like java.util.Map.get()
• Create a custom class to return both parameters. (See other answer)
• Use a 1 element array for one of the return values.
  boolean method(List[] result) {
  result[0] = answer;
  return flag;
  }
• Use a library like Google Guava that has a Pair/Tuple class:
  Pair method() {
  return new Pair(flag, answer);
  }
• Change your code so that it isn’t necesssary, this is usually the right answer. See the exception comment or change the way things are passed around.