How does this work?

[MienTommy]

Structure

struct free_throws
{
std::string name;
int made;
int attempts;
float percent;
};

Function definition

free_throws & accumulate(free_throws & target, const free_throws & source)
{
target.attempts += source.attempts;
target.made += source.made;
set_pc(target);
return target;
}

Main

free_throws dup;
free_throws four = {"Whily Looper", 5, 9};
free_throws five = {"Long Long", 6, 14};
accumulate(dup,five) = four; 

How exactly does accumulate(dup,five) = four; work? It seems like it is assigning a free_throws value to a function which does not exactly make logical sense.

[tath]

accumulate return a value, in this case: free_throws &

so if there is return target and target is reference to dup,
then line accumulate(dup,five) = four; is assigning struct four values to struct dup.

----
so if you have function that return value, treat it, as value it returns. It is the best seen in IDE using code completion.

std::string func()
{
	std::string asd("asdasd");

	return asd;
}

and when using this function you have access to all all std::string asd methods:

int main ()
{
	asd().c_str()[0] = 's';
	//asd().at[1] ... [etc]

	return 0;
}