Question

I’m still pretty new to C. I still don’t understand everything with pointers at all.
I’m trying to make a method that returns a String.
Here’s the function, it’s still incomplete.

char getS(char *fileName){
    FILE *src;
    if((src = fopen(fileName, "r")) == NULL){
        printf("%s %s %s", "Cannot open file ", fileName, ". The program is now ending.");
        exit(-1);
    }
    char *get = " ";        
    //insert getting a random word here
    return(*get);
}

and I’m trying to call the method like this

char *article = getS("articles.txt");
char *noun = getS("nouns.txt");
char *verb = getS("verbs.txt");

The compiler is giving me this:

error: invalid type argument of unary ‘*’ (have ‘int’)

What should I do?

Answer 1

Your function should return a char * (a string), instead of a char, and it should return the same. So the function becomes:

char * getS(char *fileName) {
    FILE *src;
    if((src = fopen(fileName, "r")) == NULL) {
        printf("%s %s %s", "Cannot open file ", fileName, ". The program is now ending.");
        exit(-1);
    }

    char *get = " ";        
    //insert getting a random word here

    return get;
}