Trouble passing string arrays through functions..

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to C. I've dabbled in some Java, C#, etc...

I'm simply trying to create random sentences using strings. For instance...:

Code:

---

char getNoun() {       
        int randNum = (rand() % 5);


        char nounOne[] = "boy";
        char nounTwo[] = "girl";
        char nounThree[] = "dog";
        char nounFour[] = "town";
        char nounFive[] = "car";
        //printf("%d", randNum); for debugging
        switch(randNum) {
                case 0: //printf("%s", nounOne);
                        return nounOne[0];
                        break;
                case 1: //printf("%s", nounTwo);
                        return nounTwo[0];
                        break;
                case 2: //printf("%s", nounThree);
                        return nounThree[0];
                        break;
                case 3: //printf("%s", nounFour);
                        return nounFour[0];
                        break;
                case 4: //printf("%s", nounFive);
                        return nounFive[0];
                        break;
                default: return 'p';  break;
       
        }


}


int main()
{
        srand((unsigned)time(NULL));


        printf("%s %s\n", getNoun(), getNoun());


        system("pause");


    return 0;
}

---

It works when I printf as "%s" in the getNoun function...but when I call the getNoun() function and try to print it as a "%s" my program crashes. If I printf it as "%c" it will print the first character....

So... I'm very new to pointers and references.... Am I anywhere close to where I need to be? Do I need to iterate through the characters in the string array somehow using pointers?

Like this

Code:

---

char *getNoun() {
  char *nouns[] = {
    "boy",
    "girl",
  };
  return nouns[rand()%2];
}

---

You can't have
char nounOne[] = "boy";
because nounOne is a local variable, and strings are not returned as arrays, but as pointers.
So when the array goes out of scope, the pointer becomes invalid.