You may be interested to contrast how it works in python with C. If you have something like int * bar() { int d[2] = {1,2}; return d;} When you comp

You may be interested to contrast how it works in python with C. If you have something like int * bar() { int d[2] = {1,2}; return d;} When you compile with gcc you get foo.c: In function ‘bar’: foo.c:4:8: warning: function returns address of local variable [-Wreturn-local-addr] This is the behavior it seems like you were expecting, where the array is stored on the stack and so a pointer is invalid once the function ends.