C++ Pass By Const Reference and Return By Const Reference

Question

I\'m trying to understand if there is any benefit to returning a const reference. I have a factorial function that normally looks like this:

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Answer 1

This is invalid. You can't return reference to a local variable.

MSVS C++ compiler even gives the following warning:

main.cc : warning C4172: returning address of local variable or temporary

Not quite sure about GCC, but probably the result would be the same.