Explain this code

Question

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int x=15;
int & f() {
return x;
}
int main () {
f()=10;
cout<<x;
}

Answer 1

x is defined globally (declared outside main function)

f returns a reference of x, so one can change the value by assigning the reference (alias) a different value, here 10

You can think of this as a shortcut of these steps:

int& a = f();
a = 10;
// after that, both a and x are 10, since both describe the same spot in memory (reference)

Answer 2

Thank you Matthias

Answer 3

Thx Matthias & Akeel Mohamed 😃