What C++ function should return?

Question

I have the following snippet of code:

 time_t data1 = time(0)+86400; 
 struct tm * data_emprestimo = localtime( & data1 );
 cout << "Hoje: " << data_emprestimo->tm_mday << '/' << (data_emprestimo->tm_mon + 1) << '/' << (data_emprestimo->tm_year + 1900) << endl;

It works well.

But I wonder what kind I should return in a function to get what cout echos and put on a variable: struct tm? Just tm? Array? String?

I've tried something like this:

struct tm retornaData(int segundosAdd);
            ...
            ...
struct tm retornaData(int segundosAdd){
   return data_emprestimo;
}

but it did not work.

And I already googled that a lot!

Answer 1

struct tm * data_emprestimo

declares a pointer to a struct, so to return the struct itself as a value, you need to dereference the pointer, return *data_emprestimo;.

Answer 2

It seems to me that you wish to write a function that returns a string representation of a date.

Within c++ std::string would be the natural return type for string data. A more C-style approach might suggest you pass in a char * as a the buffer to which you wish the date printed - in general std::string is seen to be a cleaner and more robust approach.