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From: mrice@caen.engin.umich.edu (Michael Rice)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Returning a char* in Turbo C:
Keywords: Turb
Message-ID: <1990Jul30.180240.14066@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 90 18:02:40 GMT
References: <1990Jul30.050221.29945@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Sender: news@caen.engin.umich.edu (CAEN Netnews)
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Lines: 27

Thanks to all those who responded by email.  Many possible problems
were pointed out to me.  

1.  It was suggested I was returning (NULL)->vname which would give me
    the gibberish I encountered.  This wasn't actually the problem
    since the data structures I am using are set up in a way that this
    NULL pointer will never occur.  I will probably write in error
    checking for this at a later time.

2.  It was suggested that I was returning a variable that is out of
    its scope in the calling procedure.  This is probably true, but
    this wasn't the problem either.  I guess it is true that it returns
    a pointer to memory that is not allocated anymore, but the data is
    still available there unless I write over it and since the data is
    used immediately it wouldn't cause the problem.  Is it possible
    somehow in the future this memory will be corrupted before I get
    what I want from it?

3.  It was also suggested that I didn't declare the function as (char*)
    in the calling code and it defaulted to (int).  This was the problem.
   

Thanks to all who replied.  Any other comments are appreciated.
I am new to Turbo C and somewhat new to C so I'll probably have more
questions.  Thanks again.

Mike