Scoping question in C

[Kevin Cozens]

William Park wrote:

>But, if the static string lives for the duration of the program, then
>pointer to it should always be valid, no?  Eg.
>
>    char *func2()
>    {
>	char *y;
>
>	y = "something inside";
>	return (y);
>    }
>
>Here, 'y' (or, what the function returns) should be valid for entire
>program.
>  
>
In func2, y is allocated on the stack and only exists while executing 
the code of func2. After the return, the variable y "disappears" as the 
stack space used by the function is released. The value returned by 
func2 remains valid since the value assigned to y was that of an object 
with a fixed address.

Be very careful in doing what you show in the above example. If you 
don't pay close attention to whether the address pointed to by y still 
exists after the function returns you can easily find yourself starting 
at a seg fault message when running your program.

-- 
Cheers!

Kevin.  (http://www.interlog.com/~kcozens/)

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