Scope of (string) literals

Question

I always try to avoid to return string literals, because I fear they aren\'t defined outside of the function. But I\'m not sure if this is the case. Let\'s take, for example

Answer 1

You actually return a pointer to the zero-terminated string stored in the data section of the executable, an area loaded when you load the program. Just avoid to try and change the characters, it might give unpredictable results...