Function returning an array in ObjC for iPhone

Question

Hello I am trying to make this function to return an array! What is going wrong here?

-(char[10])print01:(int)int11{ //error: declared as method returning an array
    char arrayT[10];

    for(int i=0;i<8;i++)
    {
        if ((int1-n1)>=0){
            arrayT[i]='1';
            int1-=n1;
        }
        else 
            arrayT[i]= '0';
        n1=n1/2;
    }

    return arrayT[]; // incompatible types in return
}

and I want to call it like that:

char array1[10] = [self print01:(int)int1]; //error: invalid initializer

any suggestions please?

Carl Norum · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-17 22:04:26Z

5

You can't return an array in C or in Objective-C. The best you can hope for is to return a pointer to an array, but if you're going to do that, make sure you don't return a pointer to an array on the stack (like yours is).

answered Feb 17, 2011 at 22:04

Carl Norum

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Jared Pochtar · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-18 00:00:45Z

0

The best approach is using an NSArray (of objects of course, I'm assuming the above code is simplified sample, but you can always use an NSNumber). Alternatively, you could return a pointer to an array, which is common in C as C (and objective c by extension) cannot return an array. Unfortunately, this would require allocating memory for the array and using manual memory management, (malloc/free) which depending on the lifecycle of the array, can be anywhere from a nuisance to awful. My recommendation is taking a char *dest parameter, and inserting chars into the array as dest[i]

edited Feb 18, 2011 at 0:00

answered Feb 17, 2011 at 22:21

Jared Pochtar

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2 Comments

user622203 Over a year ago

So you suggest me to read integers instead of chars? Actually I want to have 4 arrays of 8 elements.

Jared Pochtar Over a year ago

my bad, I was typing that on the iPhone and forgot -- I've changed it to say chars

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