Accessing only a subset of function outputs

[fredrikekre]

Since Julia 1.7 you can use property destruction (JuliaLang/julia#39285) as follows:

julia> foo() = (x1 =1, x2 = 2, x3 = 3);

julia> (; x2) = foo();

julia> x2
2

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@Atiyah

Named tuples would be beneficial if

• there are a lot of outputs
• no need to memorise the order of the outputs

If your functions return too many things such that this is a problem I would rething the API and maybe break things down into smaller pieces.

@Atiyah

allow modification of the functions with additional outputs (without necessarily modifying the programs that calls such functions)

This is already possible (unless going from 1 to more return values), for example:

julia> foo() = (1, 2, 3);

julia> _, b = foo();

julia> b
2