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From: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: help with declaration
Message-ID: <1321@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: Thu, 18-Jun-87 13:48:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: dataio.1321
Posted: Thu Jun 18 13:48:58 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 14:12:08 EDT
References: <8286@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O - FutureNet Corp., Redmond, WA
Lines: 26
Keywords: function pointer

In article <8286@ut-sally.UUCP> atc@ut-sally.UUCP (Alvin T. Campbell III) writes:
<	I have a question for all you C wizards out there. I want to write 
<a function which returns a pointer to another function. I checked Kernighan
<& Ritchie and Harbison & Steele, but found no solution.
<
<main()
<{	int	(*func)();
<
<	func = getmenu();
<	(*func)();
<}
<	So how do I declare getmenu() ?

int (*getmenu())();

The trick to doing declarations like these is to notice that the syntax
for the declaration of a variable is identical to the syntax for the use
of that variable. For example, to call a function:
	func();
To call a function using a pointer to a function, replace func with
*pfunc (parentheses are req'd because the trailing () binds more tightly):
	(*pfunc)();
To call a function using a pointer to a function that is returned by
another function getmenu, replace pfunc with getmenu():
	(*getmenu())();
and there is the declaration!