Returning an array in C++

PLEASE /prog/ help me out here. I've read and tested at least 5 "answers" to my question that I've found on google, but I can't get any of them to work. You guys are better than them though, right?

I wanted to call an array by reference in a function. Then, I learned that that was impossible. I tried returning the array, but you can't do that either.

Apparently, I need to do some shit with pointers to return the array. How the fuck do I do this?

>>68
Well, it's garbage for anything other than pointers or primitive types simply because of constructors. If you're trying to set up some kind of pool (say a pool of particle objects), to use new[] you have to subvert the usual constructor/destructor scheme and provide your own init/destroy functions. This is dumb. You're much better off malloc()'ing the memory, and using in-place construction/destruction, so you can have proper constructors and destructors for your objects without the associated allocation costs.

As far as primitive types go, there are safer ways. These sorts of arrays are usually either fixed compile-time sizes, so you're better off having them as a field of a struct/class, or for growable arrays, so you're better off using some sort of vector class (or std::vector if you're lazy). And no, there is no overhead to an std::vector of primitives aside from the size of the array (which, if you're sizing dynamically, you generally need to have stored anyway).