> Side note: Someone brought up structured bindings in a comment, as if this fixed the issue. Structured bindings are a great example of the half-way fixes that

> Side note: Someone brought up structured bindings in a comment, as if this fixed the issue. Structured bindings are a great example of the half-way fixes that proponents of modern C++ love to cite. Structured bindings help some, but if you think they make returning by tuple ergonomic, you’re mistaken. You still need to write std::pair or std::make_tuple in the function return statement. No you don't. A tuple needs to be declared once. Then everything else is sugared. #include <string> #include <tuple> using Foo = std::tuple<int, std::string, float>; Foo foo(int a, const char* b, double c) { return {a,b,c}; } Foo bar(long); double baz(long x) { const auto [a, b, c] = bar(x); return c; } godbolt: https://godbolt.org/z/exdsb4hqb https://godbolt.org/z/exdsb4hqb Note that the return part of this (foo()) worked as far back as C++11. Only the structured bindings on the receiving side (baz) requires C++17.