return reference to local variable, good code?

Hello everyone,


I am reading some code from other people, there are some code like this,

Code:

---

class Foo {

};

Foo& func()
{
        Foo foo;
        return foo;
}

int main()
{
        Foo& foo = func();

        return 0;
}

---

I want to confirm with you that it is not good code, since we return a reference to local object instance, right? Even if the code has expected function currently.


thanks in advance,
George

Very bad code. It should not work correctly since the variable you pass a reference to will be destructed once func exits - thus main works on a destructed object - and object that does not exist.

It'll probably work ok in this case, but as soon as you call another function, it's going to use the same space on the stack as the local variable, which of course overwrites the data.

--
Mats

You're not trying to use the dangling reference so you most likely wont have any problems with that code. However, if you had some members in foo and were later trying to output them via cout from main, then you will almost certainly get nothing but garbage, at best.