I’m working with an Arduino library I slightly modified for AVR C, which interfaces with an ICM-20948 IMU (Integrated Measurement Unit). In it, I found this “gem”:

uint8_t* temp = read_multiple_icm20948_reg(ub_0, B0_TEMP_OUT_H, 2);

Where read_multiple… is defined as:

static uint8_t* read_multiple...(userbank ub, uint8_t reg, uint8_t len){
    static uint8_t reg_val[6];
    .
    .
    .
    return reg_val;
}

My question is, is this a static function that returns a pointer, or a regular function that returns a static pointer? And should I restructure it to look like this:

uint8_t* temp;
read_multiple_icm20948_reg(temp, ub_0, B0_TEMP_OUT_H, 2);

Where read_multiple… would be defined as

void read_multiple...(uint8_t *ret, userbank ub, uint8_t reg, uint8_t len);

To avoid undefined behaviour in the form of returning a pointer to stack-allocated memory.