From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!sri-unix!mullen@Nrl-Css
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Problem with function returning pointer to function of type void
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.824
Posted: Tue Mar 22 15:13:18 1983
Received: Wed Apr  6 03:58:07 1983

From:  Preston Mullen <mullen@Nrl-Css>

Why does
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float i=97.;
float *g()	{ return &i; }
float *(*f())()	{ return g; }
main()		{ printf("%g\n",*(*f())()); }
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work (printing "97"), when
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void g()	{ printf("hi\n"); }
void (*f())()	{ return g; }
main()		{ (*f())(); }
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fails to compile, giving the error message
	line 2: operands of RETURN have incompatible types
?

I think the only significant difference is that "float *" has been
replaced by "void" in the definition of g and f.

P.S.  This is using the 4.1bsd c compiler.