[lelanthran]

> I sometimes wonder why I don't use this pattern more often.

Because while handy, it's not universally applicable (just like everything else :-))

I (C programmer, mostly) use sequences more often than you'd expect for parameters[1], but that does not mean that it makes sense to always return sequences.

In a lot of cases, sure, a function should return a sequence of values. In many other cases, it makes no sense - `if (canProceed(x,y,z))` reads more sensibly than `if (canProceed(x, y, z)[0]`.

[1] My string functions mostly lend themselves well to unlimited number of parameters. For example concatenation takes unlimited parameters and concats all of them, which it returns. Same with substring searching - take a source string and an unlimited number of substrings to find.

[galaxyLogic]

I agree it often makes for more readable code to return a single value instead of an array. But it makes for more maintainable code to return an array.

Whatever you can do with a single value you can also do with an array containing just that single value. How practical that is depends on the language used. In JS after ES6 arrays are syntactically quite nice and easy to use.