pass strings by reference in C

the code most likely segfaults because you are allocating space for the string but forgetting that a string has an extra byte on the end, the null terminator.

Also you are only passing a pointer in. Since a pointer is a 32-bit value (on a 32-bit machine) you are simply passing the value of the unitialised pointer into "fn". In the same way you wouldn't expact an integer passed into a function to be returned to the calling function (without explicitly returning it) you can't expect a pointer to do the same. So the new pointer values are never returned back to the main function. Usually you do this by passing a pointer to a pointer in C.

Also don't forget to free dynamically allocated memory!!

void
fn(char *baz, char **foo, char **bar)
{
     char *pch;

     /* this is the part I'm having trouble with */

     pch = strtok (baz, ":");
     *foo = malloc(strlen(pch) + 1);
     strcpy(*foo, pch);

     pch = strtok (NULL, ":");
     *bar = malloc(strlen(pch) + 1);
     strcpy(*bar, pch);

     return;
}

int
main(void)
{
     char *mybaz, *myfoo, *mybar;

     mybaz = "hello:world";

     fn(mybaz, &myfoo, &mybar);

     fprintf(stderr, "%s %s", myfoo, mybar);

     free( myFoo );
     free( myBar );
}

The essential problem is that although storage is ever allocated (with malloc()) for the results you are trying to return as myfoo and mybar, the pointers to those allocations are not actually returned to main(). As a result, the later call to printf() is quite likely to dump core.

The solution is to declare the arguments as ponter to pointer to char, and pass the addresses of myfoo and mybar to fn. Something like this (untested) should do the trick:

void
fn(char *baz, char **foo, char **bar)
{
     char *pch;

     /* this is the part I'm having trouble with */

     pch = strtok (baz, ":");
     *foo = malloc(strlen(pch)+1);  /* include space for NUL termination */
     strcpy(*foo, pch);

     pch = strtok (NULL, ":");
     *bar = malloc(strlen(pch)+1);  /* include space for NUL termination */
     strcpy(*bar, pch);

     return;
}

int
main(void)
{
     char mybaz[] = "hello:world";
     char *myfoo, *mybar;

     fn(mybaz, &myfoo, &mybar);
     fprintf(stderr, "%s %s", myfoo, mybar);
     free(myfoo);
     free(mybar);
}

Don't forget the free each allocated string at some later point or you will create memory leaks.

To do both the malloc() and strcpy() in one call, it would be better to use strdup(), as it also remembers to allocate room for the terminating NUL which you left out of your code as written. *foo = strdup(pch) is much clearer and easier to maintain that the alternative. Since strdup() is POSIX and not ANSI C, you might need to implement it yourself, but the effort is well repaid by the resulting clarity for this kind of usage.

The other traditional way to return a string from a C function is for the caller to allocate the storage and provide its address to the function. This is the technique used by sprintf(), for