Java return the Object/modify the object (coding guidelines)

Question

If a method populates/modifies an object, would it be preferable to return the object or to keep the return type as void and the method would modify the Object through its r

Answer 1

I depends on your style, but one advantage of returning: you could call populate(o).doSomethingElse();, i.e. you can chain method calls.

Have a look at how StringBuilder does that for example, which allows things like this new StringBuilder().append("a").append("b")....