Can a c program return an array

This is better than making the array static , but now you have to make sure you free the array when you are finished with it. This is my preferred method, but in this particular case you might as well just call scanf directly. The only valid initializers for an array declaration are either a brace-enclosed sequence of values:.

You cannot initialize an array in a declaration with the result of a function, because a function cannot return array types. If all you need to do is read a word into the array, just bypass function and call scanf directly:. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How can code return an array of characters in C? Ask Question.

Asked 1 year, 9 months ago. Active 1 year, 9 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Gianmarco Cerone Gianmarco Cerone 11 3 3 bronze badges. This may cause unexpected output undefined behavior. Sometimes you might get an error and some other time your program may run correctly. In the next tutorial, you will learn about multidimensional arrays array of an array.

Course Index Explore Programiz. Popular Tutorials Data Types in C. C for Loop. Arrays in C Programming. Pointers in C. Find roots of a quadratic equation. Print Pyramids and Patterns.

Check prime number. Print the Fibonacci series. Reference Materials string. Start Learning C. Explore C Examples. Find Largest Element in an Array.

C Multidimensional Arrays. Relationship Between Arrays and Pointers. Access Array Elements Using Pointer. If you want to return a single-dimensional array from a function, a function returning a pointer should be declared as in the following example:. The second thing to remember is that C does not support returning the address of a local variable outside of the function, so you will have to define it as a static variable.

Now, consider the function below that will generate 20 numbers randomly and return them using an array. Dynamically allocated memory allocated using new or malloc remains their memory until delete or free is removed.