Pointer to a static variable?

Question

Is it illegal / dangerous?

int* static_nonew()
{
    static int n = 5;
    return &n;
}

The compiler has no problems with it, but is the pointer location safe from being overwritten when someone else needs memory?

EDIT: A little more explanation why I asked this question. Note. I am programming in C ++, I just marked it as C, because it seems to be more of a C question than C ++.

I have a class that should return a static map. I want this card to be initialized once during the whole program, as there seems to be no need to do this several times. For this reason, I will have something like this:

static std::map<std::string, Transition*> transitions;
static Transition trans1(transitions, ...);
static Transition trans2(transitions, ...);
return &transitions;

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Answer 1

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

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Answer 4

, int* static_nonew( )

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On the other hand, it is a fully legal code. Also, replace intwith some structthat need to be initialized once, and this is a pretty useful idiom.