Is there any benefit to returning the result of assigning a value to a local variable rather than the value directly?

Question

I am doing a java code inspection. Here is a function (snippet):

String getValue() {
     String res;
     StringBuilder strBuilder = new StringBuilder();

     // More code here that sets strBuilder

     return res = strBuilder.toString();
}

First there is a warning that the value of res is not used. Secondly I don't understand the return. Why don't they just return( strBuilder.toString() ). Is there some sort of advantage?

Answer 1

res is not used, so there is no reason to return like that. You can remove it:

String getValue() {
     StringBuilder bs = new StringBuilder();
     //
     // More code here that sets sb

     return bs.toString();
}

Answer 2

That sort of code can sometimes result from incomplete removal of debug artifacts:

String getValue() {

     String res;
     StringBuilder bs = new StringBuilder();
     //
     // More code here that sets sb

     res = bs.toString();
     // Test and/or display res here
     return res; 
}

It certainly seems like a good candidate for the next round of refactoring and clean-up.