functions returning char pointer

Question

I came across lot of functions returning char pointers in one legacy application. Some of them returning pointers to local character arrays. It seems to be causing crashes a

Answer 1

Never return a pointer to local variable. It may work in some situations, but in general you will have lots of problems with it. Instead:

• document your function that it returns a pointer to allocated memory and that the returned buffer must be freed by the caller
• add a buffer and a size argument, and fill in the buffer (this is what is generally done in the Win32 API)
• if using C++, use std::string