Java – it is not a good practice to use arrays as parameters to return multiple values

I sometimes (actually, often) find myself using a single element array to return multiple values from a method Something like this:

public static int foo(int param1,int param2[],String param3[])
{
    // method body
    ....
    // set return values
    param2[0] = <some value>;
    param3[0] = <some value>;

    return <some value>;
}

Is this a bad practice? (it seems that some of my friends said they didn't know what it was doing for 2 seconds!) But the reason I use it first is because it looks closest to the passing reference in C And not discouraged in C, so

But if this is really a wrong way of doing things, how can any idea rewrite it in a clean way?

thank you

Solution

Although I agree with the general comment here that using arrays for this purpose is not a good practice, I would like to add something

Editor: I suggest you search this forum or the Internet for the terms "side effects", "functional programming" or "invariance" This is likely to open up a new perspective for your problem