return a uint8_t from a funtion and printing it in the main function

Question

i have a following funtion

    uint8_t func(){
        uint8_t key[16] = {0};
        // some operations
        return key;
     }

i am calling this function in the main function

int main(void){
    uint8_t rcKey[16] = func();
    for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++)
    {
        printf("%x ", rcKey[i]);
    }

}

what am i doing incorrectly here? I get invalid initializer error

Answer 1

An array can't be initialized directly via a function call. You can only initialize the individual elements as part of an initializer list.

What you can do instead is pass the array to a function to set the relevant values.

void func(uint8_t key[]){
    // some operations
 }

int main(void){
    uint8_t rcKey[16]
    func(rcKey);
    for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++)
    {
        printf("%x ", rcKey[i]);
    }

}