General rules of passing/returning reference of array (not pointer) to/from a function?

Question

We can pass reference of an array to a function like:

void f(int (&a)[5]);

int x[5];
f(x);     //okay
int y[6];
f(y);     //error - type of y is not `in         


        

Answer 1

With C++11's trailing return type syntax, you can also write:

auto foo () -> int (&)[3]
{
    static int some_array[3]; // doesn't have to be declared here
    return some_array; // return a reference to the array.
}