Return value of pointer-to-pointer

Question

I have a question regarding pointers to pointers.

Lets assume I have a class foo . And I create a pointer of a pointer to this class somewhere in my code.

foo** x;

What would be the return value if I make a function which returns foo** as well?

foo** bar();

I also have an array of pointers and I want to return this array in an accessor function as a pointer-to-pointer-to a class.

Answer 1

I'm not sure the question is about shared names or double pointers, but if such is possible, you can declare allocate space for a foo object and return that address/pointer(variable).

Does it really have to be a double pointer though? You can make a pointer to an allocated pointer, but that would have no point. On the other hand, you can allocate an array and return it's address to have a double pointer.

That's all I can tell :/

Answer 2

What would be the return value if I make a foo** foo(); function?

It would be the address of an object of type foo* (or a pointer-interconverible type). Or it could be null, or an invalid pointer value (but you should avoid the latter).

Note that calling this a "double pointer" is confusing since double is a type, so one might understand that you meant double* .