Why does time(time_t *) function both return and set the by-ref?

Question

I\'ve always been curious, why does the time(time_t *) function both return a time_t, and set the time to the passed in pointer?

Example of

Answer 1

It allows you to nest a call to time() within another expression, instead of doing it in a separate statement:

time_t x = time(&now) + more_time;

When the above statement finishes, now should contain the current time, and x should contain the current time plus some value.

strcpy falls in the same case because it returns the same char * pointer that has been passed as its destination, so nesting it is possible as well:

printf("Copied string is %s", strcpy(dst, src));