[Krusty]

<disclaimer>
OK, let me say first that I know next to nothing about the C language but I'm writing a simple little OpenGL program and C is the language I have to use (and I mean pure C and glut.framework ... no cooca, appkit, Obj -C etc.. This is actually the 4th of a little series I have to write and they've all been written on my mac and run seamlessly on windows .. which is what I need) .
</disclaimer>

So here's the issue: I'm setting up a bunch of arrays for points of various polygons in OpenGL. Code looks like
GLfloat column[][2] = { {3.25, 1}, {3.75,1}, {3.75,13}, {3.25,13}};

easy enough so far. But, I need to set one such GLfloat array to the return value of a function ... something like
GLfloat piece[][2] = setpiece();

.. but I have no idea what the syntax should look like. I've tried a couple of things and get "invalid initializer" (amongst other things when I screw around with it). So how do I initialize and set piece[][2] to the return value of a function ? It is unknown when I call the function how many elements will be in the 2D array so the function needs to size and return a 2D array of GLfloats as when I was setting GLfloat column[][2] = { {3.25, 1}, {3.75,1}, {3.75,13}, {3.25,13}};

Any help or redirects to a similar code sample would be helpful ... I know this must be a piece of cake for any reasonably experienced C coder and I can't seem to find a similar code sample.

Muchos Gracias

[type_r503]

Instead of using a 2D array I would create a struct for the point and create an array of your structure.

Code:
typedef struct point{

double x;
double y;

};

struct point* pointArray = (point*)malloc(sizeof(point) * numberofelements);


pointArray[index] = setPoint();

struct point* setPoint()
{
   struct point* pointy;

   return pointy;
}

Your setPoint function will then return a pointer to your struct type.
I hope this helps.

type R

[smeger]

Code:
typedef struct {
   GLFloat x, 
   GLFloat y, 
} MyGLPoint;

MyGLPoint* pieces = setpiece();
// do stuff
free(pieces);

and then, in setpiece

Code:
MyGLPoint* setpiece () {
   // find out how many MyGLPoints you're going to require
   MyGLPoint *returnedPieces = malloc ( requiredPointCount * sizeof(MyGLPoint) );
   returnedPieces[0].x = 1;    
   returnedPieces[0].y = 2.5;
   // etc.

[Krusty]

Hey, thanks you guys (gals?). I'll work with bot h suggestions later tonight and see how it goes.

I *LOVE* these boards