correct way to return two dimensional array from a function c

Question

I have tried this but it won\'t work:

#include 

    int * retArr()
    {
    int a[3][3] = {{1,2,3},{4,5,6},{7,8,9}};
    return a;
    }

           


        

Answer 1

In the example given by the OP, it is the easiest to put the array on the stack. I didn't test this but it would be like this.

#include stdio.h

void retArr(a[][3]) {
  a[0][0] = 1; a[0][1] = 2; a[0][2] = 3;
  a[1][0] = 4; a[1][1] = 5; a[1][2] = 6;
  a[2][0] = 7; a[2][1] = 8; a[2][2] = 9;
}

main() {
  int a[3][3];
  retArr(a);
}

Yeah, this doesn't "return" the array with the return function, but I would suppose that wasn't the intent of the question. The array, a[][], does get loaded, and the loaded a[][] is available in main after retArr() is called, nothing is overwritten.