What happens on function return to what's been stored in stack memory?

[helloworldcpp]

Hello everyone,

I have done my research but could not find an answer to this question I have. It might be due to lack of my bad phrasing of queries, so I beg your pardon in advance if this has been answered elsewhere but I would like to understand this very much.

Inside my main function, if I create an integer with:

int myInt;

to store an integer, and then call a predefined function (myFunc) with:

myInt = myFunc();

int myFunc () {

    int calculatedInt;

/* some important calculations
   are calculated and ran here to
   be stored in calculatedInt */

    calculatedInt = 8; // as an example.

    return calculatedInt;

}

My question:

 - What exactly happens in computers memory?

 - Does it store "8" in an address, then copy it
to another address and delete first one?
(since it falls out of scope after function terminates)

 - Or does it store it once, in a single address, and
returns a pointer to it under the hood as if I had a
function that returns a pointer to an object
created inside the function via "new" keyword?

ex:

int* myFunc () {

    int* calculatedInt = new int;

    // .... .... ...

    // Return the pointer pointing to a what calculatedInt points to.
    return calculatedInt;

}

In above scenario calculatedInt the pointer is stored in "stack", and only once does a new int is created and stored in heap permenantly, and its address gets returned so if my above myInt was a pointer, it would be pointed to that.

Or am I wrong?

Can you please compare the two scenarios?

[JLBorges]

Returning by value, as in int myFunc () returns a copy of an object (a copy of calculatedInt in the example).

Returning a pointer by value, as in int* myFunc () returns a copy of an address (a copy of the pointer calculatedInt in the example).

In either case, each time the function is called, a fresh copy is returned.

[helloworldcpp]

JLBorges,

Am I correct understand that a copy means that the same value is copied to a new memory address and that's what's returned?

Thank you.

[Cubbi]

not every value has an address. That function just retuns the value
(try compiling int* p = &myFunct(); or even int* p = &42; )

[vlad from moscow]

Usually object code uses registers (more often register EAX or register pair EAX:EDX for Intel compatible processors) to return objects of such simple types as int or int *. So the object code simply stores the values in register in the memory occupied by the variable that is assigned to.

[helloworldcpp]

Thank you very much all.