Is returning 2 values from a function ever required ?

If your code is organized well, and your functions act on context structures, a pass/fail result, or an error code where 0 = success, and everything else is an error, or a pointer to a structure with multiple values, seems to be entirely sufficient.

I quite prefer C, over C++ and other perhaps "more expressive" languages, exactly because it is simpler. It does more with less.

"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein