That's not what I mean. I meant the expression has a side effect, not the function. ++x both increments the variable x (a side effect) and returns the incremented value.

That kind of thing is often seen as a bad practice for readability. Personally, I try to avoid it.

Disagree with those who consider this best practices - it uses expressoins with side effects (the ++ pre-increment). It is clever, however.