What is the purpose of “return await” in C#?

Question

Is there any scenario where writing method like this:

public async Task DoSomethingAsync()
{
    // Some synchronous code          


        

Answer 1

If you don't need async (i.e., you can return the Task directly), then don't use async.

There are some situations where return await is useful, like if you have two asynchronous operations to do:

var intermediate = await FirstAsync();
return await SecondAwait(intermediate);

For more on async performance, see Stephen Toub's MSDN article and video on the topic.

Update: I've written a blog post that goes into much more detail.