Multiple Return Values in OpenSCAD
OpenSCAD doesn’t have built-in support for multiple return values or functions in the same way as some other programming languages. However, we can simulate this behavior using lists. Here’s an equivalent implementation:
// This function returns a list of two values
function vals() = [3, 7];
// Main execution
function main() = {
// We use list indexing to access the returned values
a = vals()[0];
b = vals()[1];
echo(a);
echo(b);
// If you only want a subset of the returned values,
// you can simply ignore the other values
c = vals()[1];
echo(c);
};
// Call the main function
main();
In OpenSCAD, functions are the closest equivalent to the concept of multiple return values. Here’s how this example works:
We define a function
vals()
that returns a list containing two values,[3, 7]
.In the
main()
function, we callvals()
and use list indexing to access the individual values.We use the
echo()
function to print the values, as OpenSCAD doesn’t have a direct equivalent tofmt.Println()
.To simulate ignoring a return value, we simply don’t use the first value when we assign to
c
.Finally, we call the
main()
function to execute our code.
When you run this OpenSCAD script, it will output:
ECHO: 3
ECHO: 7
ECHO: 7
Note that OpenSCAD is primarily a 3D modeling scripting language, so it doesn’t have many features of general-purpose programming languages. The concept of multiple return values is simulated here using lists, which is a common approach in languages that don’t natively support multiple return values.