Problem in Returning STR from Function in C-CodePudding

Hello and I'm sorry I don't speak English well.

I know this is repetitive But I Have a problem and i've never found the answer to my problem.

Shows this error whenever I compile this code by GCC : code :

const char* myFunction()
{
    static char array[] = "my string";
    return array;
}
char a[101];
a=myFunction();

Error :

StackOverFlow.c: In function ‘main’:
StackOverFlow.c:51:2: error: assignment to expression with array type
   16 | a=myFunction();
      |  ^

When I use the return value of the function directly within printf Function, it doesn't make an error.

printf ("%s", myFunction());

i dont know what's it's problem. sorry for Bad English.

CodePudding user response：

That's because, in C, this is the same as assigning the pointer to array to a, but you have already "initialized" a.

I don't know what you're try to achieve, but if you want to copy the string, use

strcpy(a, myFunction());

or, if you want the pointer, try

char *a;
a=myFunction(); //If you try using printf with a it will work.