often used seldom defined terms: lvalue

Question

What is an lvalue?

Answer 1

Something that appears on the left hand side of an assignment i.e. something that can be assigned to.

Note that in C++ a function call may be an lvalue if:

int & func() {
   static int a = 0;
   return a;
}

then:

func() = 42;     // is legal (and not uncommon)