Returning Pointers from a Function in C++

A C++ program may return a pointer, just is may have them passed to the function.

To specify a pointer, you define that data type in the return type. For example:

int* genericFunction()
{
  int* list;
  // do things
  return list;
}

The book gives an example on how to return an array this way, however, as it uses an existing array, the array is already passed to it by reference, so you don’t need to return the array.

So while there are times when you need to return a pointer, it isn’t needed very often. especially with primitive data, or the types we’ve seen so far.

Returning Pointers from a Function in C++ was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Walter Wimberly

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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