No. The auto there is doing some lifting so that you can declare the type afterwards. The return type is only defined once. There is, however, a return type au

No. The auto there is doing some lifting so that you can declare the type afterwards. The return type is only defined once. There is, however, a return type auto-deduction in recent standards iirc, which is especially useful for lambdas. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/auto.html https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/auto.html auto f() -> int; // OK: f returns int auto g() { return 0.0; } // OK since C++14: g returns double auto h(); // OK since C++14: h’s return type will be deduced when it is defined