Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!fenchurch.mit.edu!jbs
From: jbs@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: function returning pointer to itself
Message-ID: <9667@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: 13 Jul 88 08:26:33 GMT
References: <5485@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Sender: uucp@eddie.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jbs@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal)
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 22

In article <5485@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> olson@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (olson) writes:
>Does the new C standard have a natural way to declare a
>function that returns a pointer to itself
>????

I'm not sure about a natural way, but the following should suffice:

typedef void *(*NextStateFun)();

static void *state1();
static void *state2();
static void *state3();

void *state1() { return (void *)state2; }
void *state2() { return (void *)state3; }
void *state3() { return NULL; }
void * const initial_state = (void *)state1;
.
.
.
    void *state = initial_state;
  
    while (state) { state = (*(NextStateFun)state)(); }