I need help with pointers (& and *) and functions

[asilvester635]

I'm trying to return the pointer to the variable that has the bigger value using pointers & and *. Below is the source code for my main.cc, functions.cc, and functions.h files. What did I do wrong here? I have also posted the error that it gave me.

ERROR STATEMENT:
functions.cc:9:10: error: cannot initialize return object of type 'int *' with
an lvalue of type 'int'
return *a;
^~
functions.cc:11:10: error: cannot initialize return object of type 'int *' with
an lvalue of type 'int'
return *b;
^~
2 errors generated.
make: *** [functions.o] Error 1



main.cc

#include <string>
#include <cstdio>
#include <vector>
#include "functions.h"
using namespace std;

int main( int argc, char** argv ) {

    int x = 100;
    int y = 200;
    int result = 0;

    // find out which of the two variables (x and y) is the largest
    pointerToMax(&x, &y);
}

functions.cc

#include <string>
#include <cstdio>
#include <vector>
#include "functions.h"
using namespace std;

int* pointerToMax(int* a, int* b) {
    if(a > b) {
        return *a;
    } else {
        return *b;
    }
} // end of pointerToMax

functions.h

#ifndef FUNCTIONS_H
#define FUNCTIONS_H

int* pointerToMax(int* a, int* b);

#endif

[laserlight]

This has been answered elsewhere.

[2kaud]

A couple of further points

int main( int argc, char** argv ) {

unless argc and argv are used within the code, this is usually written as

int main() {

Also

  if(a > b) {
        return *a;
    } else {
        return *b;
    }

as there is only one statement within each branch of the condition, the brackets are not needed and could be written as

  if (a > b)
        return *a;
   else
        return *b;

or using the tertiary operator as

    return (a > b) ? *a : *b;

(which still requires the error fix as mentioned in the other place).

Looking at

    pointerToMax(&x, &y);

This calls the function but does nothing with the returned value!