Question

Here I have written some code to get the square of a number from a function, but the return statement is not working as desired by me, it is giving me the same number which I have entered, I want to know the reason behind this, please if any one can explain this to me…

#include<iostream>
#include<conio.h>

using namespace std;
int square(int &i);

int main()
{
    cout<<"enter the number whose square you want to find";
    int a;
    cin>>a;
    square(a);

    cout<<"the square of the number is"<<a;
    _getch();
    return 0;
}

int square(int &i)
{
    return i*i;
}

Answer 1

You do not obtain the result.
Your line should be:
a = square(a);
to fetch the result from the function.
The other possibility would be to write in the function

int square(int &i)
{
    i = i * i;
    return i;
}

The latter will alter the variable you passed to the function which justifies passing a reference.

---

To make it clear you want to alter the variable do something like:

void square(int &i)
{
    i = i * i;
}

You see there is no return involved but it will alter the variables value.