Assigning value to function returning reference

Question

#include
using namespace std;

int &fun()
{
  static int x = 10;
  return x;
}
int main()
{
   fun() = 30;
   cout << fun();
   return 0;
}         


        

Answer 1

It works becuse the result of that function is an lvalue. References are lvalues. Basically, in the whole point of returning a non-const reference from a function is to be able to assign to it (or perform other modifications of referenced object).