Thread: returning pointers

Hi

I've spent a long time on the web & reading books trying to find out how to do this for myself.
No luck, there's a lot of stuff refering to using pointer to a function but very little on returning a pointer and it doesn't appear to do what I want it to
.
So I'm hopping someone knows how to return a pointer

I want to call a procedure and for that procedure to return a pointer.
The procedure builds a linked list of a struct

Code:

struct1 read()
{			

	// init stuff
	struct1 *start_pointer;

	loop till end
	get data
	create new record for list
	insert into list
	if this is the first recored, set a pointer to the start of the list

	//

	return start_pointer
}

main
{
	//init stuff
	struct1 *ptr;
	ptr = read();  //I want ptr to point to the start of the linked list created in read

	// other stuff
}

It looks like I'm passing pointers to pointers, but I get an error -
<cannot convert from 'struct netData *' to 'const struct netData'>

Prefixing the return parameter with a * gives error on the calling line
<binary '=' : no operator defined which takes a right-hand operand of type 'struct netData'>

while prefixing with & gives -
<cannot convert from 'struct netData ** ' to 'const struct netData'>

I also get errors prefixing both ptr and the calling read
- yes I am clutching at straws.

I have tried using this, but also get errors here

Gratefull for any help given