Best way of returning a pointer

Question

I have seen at least 5 C++ tutorial sites that return pointers this way:

int* somefunction(){
    int x = 5;
    int *result = &x;
    return result;
}

Is that not a very, VERY bad idea? My logic tells me that the returned pointer's value can be overwritten at any time. I would rather think that this would be the right solution:

int* somefuntion(){
    int x = 5;
    int* result = new int;
    *(result) = x;
    return result;
}

And then leave the calling function to delete the pointer. Or am i wrong?

Answer 1

Your instinct about the problem is correct- UB is the result. However, your proposed solution is le bad. "Leave the caller to delete it" is hideously error prone and unadvisable. Instead, return it in some owning class that properly encapsulates it's intended usage- preferably std::unique_ptr<int>.