Thread: Noob troubles

Hey everyone. I'm setting up the skeleton of my program right now. I've made a few structures, but I'm trying to make their prototypes and I can't figure out my issue. My code is below

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>


typedef struct struct_car
{
    char color[20];
    char model[20];
    char brand[20];
    int year;
} Car;


typedef struct struct_person
{
    char firstName[20];
    char lastName[20];
    int heightInInches;
} Person;


int main(int argc, char** argv) {


    return (EXIT_SUCCESS);
}


Car[]readCars(char* filename)
{
    
}


Person[]readPeople(char* filename)
{

}

C programming language does not allow to return an entire array as an argument to a function. However, you can return a pointer to an array by specifying the array's name without an index.

One option would be to pass the array (via pointer) to the function from the caller.

Code:

void readCars(Car *car_array, char* filename)
{
    // ...
}

Another would be to dynamically allocate memory to a pointer in the function, and return that pointer.

Code:

Car *readCars(char *filename)
{
    Car *car_ptr;

    /* allocate memory to "car_ptr" */
    /* load data to "car_ptr" */

    return car_ptr;
}

With the second option, you need to ensure the caller frees any allocated memory when it's done with it.