All the answer explain the problem really good.
However, I would like to add another information.
I faced the same problem at the moment I wanted the output of a function to be a vector.
In this situation, the common solution is to declare the output as an argument of the function itself. This way, the alloc
of the variable and the physical space necessary to store the information are managed outside the function. Pseudocode to explain the classical solution is:
void function(int input, int* output){
//...
output[0] = something;
output[1] = somethig_else;
//...
return;
}
In this case, the example code within the question should be changed in:
void foo(int x, char* a){
if(x < 0){
char b = "blah";
//...
strcpy(a, b);
//..
return;
}
//..
}