Why is my function not returning a value?

Question

https://code.sololearn.com/c2aCps3Ye556/?ref=app

Ive tried using pointers in my functions (call by reference) instead of calling by value but every time i try something out, it just doesnt work.
Here in my code, ive tried returning a pointer from a function and then dereferencing it when calling it. Is it ok to do so?
My program wont print anything and would actually generate a runtime error. But i cant seem to understand why that is the case.
Kindly help🙏

Thanks!!

Answer 1

Here's what I found:
1) You accidentally closed the main function with an extra }
2) when you use strcat() the first argument should be a string variable
3) I don't know why &inp[0] was used, just inp would've made more sense
4) *bracket_by_len() was not needed because the return type is a char array

Answer 2

thanks alot jtrh and Bebida Roja That did indeed solve the problem.

I was making the mistake of storing the string "word" in a constant which is not possible.

@jtrh Thanks also for pointing out the other errors in my program. However, i do want to point out here that since my function returns a pointer, is it ok for me to simply write
return temp;
or do i have to create a seperate pointer for temp and then return it

Answer 3

the first argument to strcat cannot be a constant, as the concatenation is stored in that address.

Answer 4

This works if you wanna give special brackets to the end of the string with a certain length

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

char *bracket_by_len

( char *word, int size)

{
char temp[20000];

    if (size<5)

    {

strcpy(temp,"<<");

        strcat(temp,word);

        strcat(temp,">>");

    }

    else if (size>5 && size<10)

    {

        strcpy(temp,"(*");

        strcat(temp,word);

        strcat(temp,"*)");

    }

    else

    {

        strcpy(temp,"/+");

        strcat(temp,word);

        strcat(temp,"+/");

    }

    return temp ;

}

int main()

{

    char inp[30];

   printf("Enter a word: ");

   scanf("%s",inp);

    printf("%s",bracket_by_len(inp,strlen(inp)));

return 0;
}