return an array of structs or an array of struct pointers?

Question

If you need to return a struct from a function, you would normally return a pointer to the struct instead.

If you then want to return an array of structs, is it recommended to:

1. return an array of structures (pointer to the first element)
2. or return an array of struct pointers?

I have drawn a diagram for the two options below:

1:

2:

Given the following struct definition

struct values {
    int a;
    int b;
};

here is some sample code for accessing the fields of the structs from the two options:

Option #1:

 struct values *vals = get_values1();
 printf("%d, %d\n", values[0].a, values[1].b);

Option #2:

 struct values **vals = get_values2();
 printf("%d, %d\n", values[0]->a, values[1]->b);

Answer 1

The only issue I see to not use version 1, is that it might be easier to identify the number of structures (returned) in the second version, as a NULL pointer can be used as a stopper element, whereas in the first version it might not be possible to define a stopper element.