Is returning a pointer to a static local variable safe?

Question

I\'m working with some code that widely uses the idiom of returning a pointer to a static local variable. eg:

char* const GetString()
{
  static char sTest[         


        

Answer 1

Yes, it's perfectly safe. The lifetime of local statics are that of the entire program execution in C. So you can return a pointer to it, since the array will be alive even after the function returns, and the pointer returned can validly de-referenced.