Question

I have something like the folowing C code:

struct MyStruct MyFunction (something here)
{
    struct MyStruct data;

    //Some code here

    return data;
}

would the returning value be a reference or a copy of the memory block for data?
Should MyFunction return struct MyStruct* (with the corresponding memory allocation) instead of struct MyStruct?

Answer 1

It would return a copy. C is a pass-by-value language. Unless you specify that you are passing pointers around, structures get copied for assignments, return statements, and when used as function parameters.