Array of tuples to tuple of arrays

Background: a function returns a tuple, and then I call on it using the dot syntax with an array as input. The output will be an array of tuples, but I want a tuple of arrays. My example and solution is below. The question: is this solution any good or are there obvious things to improve?

function fn1(a)
  x = a/2
  y = a*2
  return x, y
end

z = fn1.(1:3)                         #an array of tuples   
(x,y) = ntuple(i->getindex.(z,i),2)   #a tuple of arrays 

I just always use StructArrays.jl for this type of stuff nowadays, so I’ll plug that here.

Yes, StructArrays can handle conversion from Array of structs (either struct, or NamedTuple or Tuple) to a NamedTuple of Arrays (in terms of storage, but it still allows accessing the rows). For example:

julia> using StructArrays

julia> v = [(1, "a"), (2, "b")];

julia> s = StructArray(v)
2-element StructArray{Tuple{Int64,String},1,NamedTuple{(:x1, :x2),Tuple{Array{Int64,1},Array{String,1}}}}:
 (1, "a")
 (2, "b")

julia> s[1]
(1, "a")

julia> values(StructArrays.columns(s))
([1, 2], ["a", "b"])

Keeping things stored as a a StructArray is a flexible solution as you get both the tuple of vectors if you need, but at the same time can access the rows as tuples.

There is a more direct route, if it just needs to apply to that function

function fn2(a)
  return a./2, a.*2
  end;

(x,y) = fn2(z)