Return array in a function
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;}
C++ functions can't return C-style arrays by value. The closest thing is to return a pointer. Furthermore, an array type in the argument list is simply converted to a pointer.
int *fillarr( int arr[] ) { // arr "decays" to type int * return arr;}
You can improve it by using an array references for the argument and return, which prevents the decay:
int ( &fillarr( int (&arr)[5] ) )[5] { // no decay; argument must be size 5 return arr;}
With Boost or C++11, pass-by-reference is only optional and the syntax is less mind-bending:
array< int, 5 > &fillarr( array< int, 5 > &arr ) { return arr; // "array" being boost::array or std::array}
The array
template simply generates a struct
containing a C-style array, so you can apply object-oriented semantics yet retain the array's original simplicity.