C++ Memcpy Return Value
Answer : If a function has nothing specific to return, it is often customary to return one of the input parameters (the one that is seen as the primary one). Doing this allows you to use "chained" function calls in expressions. For example, you can do char buffer[1024]; strcat(strcpy(buffer, "Hello"), " World"); specifically because strcpy returns the original dst value as its result. Basically, when designing such a function, you might want to choose the most appropriate parameter for "chaining" and return it as the result (again, if you have noting else to return, i.e. if otherwise your function would return void ). Some people like it, some people don't. It is a matter of personal preference. C standard library often supports this technique, memcpy being another example. A possible use case might be something along the lines of char *clone_buffer(const char *buffer, size_t size) { return memcpy(new char[size], buffer, siz...