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patterncppCritical

Return array in a function

Submitted by: @import:stackoverflow-api··
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functionarrayreturn

Problem

I have an array int arr[5] that is passed to a function fillarr(int arr[]):

int fillarr(int arr[])
{
    for(...);
    return arr;
}


  • How can I return that array?



  • How will I use it, say I returned a pointer how am I going to access it?

Solution

In this case, your array variable arr can actually also be treated as a pointer to the beginning of your array's block in memory, by an implicit conversion. This syntax that you're using:

int fillarr(int arr[])


Is kind of just syntactic sugar. You could really replace it with this and it would still work:

int fillarr(int* arr)


So in the same sense, what you want to return from your function is actually a pointer to the first element in the array:

int* fillarr(int arr[])


And you'll still be able to use it just like you would a normal array:

int main()
{
  int y[10];
  int *a = fillarr(y);
  cout << a[0] << endl;
}

Code Snippets

int fillarr(int arr[])
int fillarr(int* arr)
int* fillarr(int arr[])
int main()
{
  int y[10];
  int *a = fillarr(y);
  cout << a[0] << endl;
}

Context

Stack Overflow Q#3473438, score: 258

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