Functions with array

Passing Arrays as Function Arguments in C

If you want to pass a single-dimension array as an argument in a function, you would have to declare a formal parameter in one of following three ways and all three declaration methods produce similar results because each tells the compiler that an integer pointer is going to be received. Similarly, you can pass multi-dimensional arrays as formal parameters.

Way-1

Formal parameters as a pointer −

void myFunction(int *param) {
   .
   .
   .
}

Way-2

Formal parameters as a sized array −

void myFunction(int param[10]) {
   .
   .
   .
}

Way-3

Formal parameters as an unsized array −

void myFunction(int param[]) {
   .
   .
   .
}

Example

Now, consider the following function, which takes an array as an argument along with another argument and based on the passed arguments, it returns the average of the numbers passed through the array as follows −

double getAverage(int arr[], int size) {

   int i;
   double avg;
   double sum = 0;

   for (i = 0; i < size; ++i) {
      sum += arr[i];
   }

   avg = sum / size;

   return avg;
}

Now, let us call the above function as follows −

#include <stdio.h>
 
/* function declaration */
double getAverage(int arr[], int size);

int main () {

   /* an int array with 5 elements */
   int balance[5] = {1000, 2, 3, 17, 50};
   double avg;

   /* pass pointer to the array as an argument */
   avg = getAverage( balance, 5 ) ;
 
   /* output the returned value */
   printf( "Average value is: %f ", avg );
    
   return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled together and executed, it produces the following result −

Average value is: 214.400000

Return array from function in C

C programming does not allow to return an entire array as an argument to a function. However, you can return a pointer to an array by specifying the array’s name without an index.

If you want to return a single-dimension array from a function, you would have to declare a function returning a pointer as in the following example −

int * myFunction() {
   .
   .
   .
}

Second point to remember is that C does not advocate to return the address of a local variable to outside of the function, so you would have to define the local variable as static variable.

Now, consider the following function which will generate 10 random numbers and return them using an array and call this function as follows −

#include <stdio.h>

/* function to generate and return random numbers */
int * getRandom( ) {

   static int  r[10];
   int i;

   /* set the seed */
   srand( (unsigned)time( NULL ) );
  
   for ( i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
      r[i] = rand();
      printf( "r[%d] = %d\n", i, r[i]);
   }

   return r;
}

/* main function to call above defined function */
int main () {

   /* a pointer to an int */
   int *p;
   int i;

   p = getRandom();
	
   for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) {
      printf( "*(p + %d) : %d\n", i, *(p + i));
   }

   return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled together and executed, it produces the following result −

r[0] = 313959809
r[1] = 1759055877
r[2] = 1113101911
r[3] = 2133832223
r[4] = 2073354073
r[5] = 167288147
r[6] = 1827471542
r[7] = 834791014
r[8] = 1901409888
r[9] = 1990469526
*(p + 0) : 313959809
*(p + 1) : 1759055877
*(p + 2) : 1113101911
*(p + 3) : 2133832223
*(p + 4) : 2073354073
*(p + 5) : 167288147
*(p + 6) : 1827471542
*(p + 7) : 834791014
*(p + 8) : 1901409888
*(p + 9) : 1990469526

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