Tuples as return values

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:

Here is an example of a function that returns a tuple:

max and min are built-in functions that find the largest and smallest elements of a sequence. max_min computes both and return a tuple of two values.

from Thinking in Python