In C++, you can also return a reference type variable from a function. To do so, you need to declare the function with the return type as a reference type.

Here's an example:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int& max(int& x, int& y) {
  if (x > y) {
    return x;
  } else {
    return y;
  }
}

int main() {
  int a = 5, b = 3;
  max(a, b) = 8; // Here, the value of 'a' will be updated to 8, as it's the larger variable.
  cout << "a: " << a << ", b: " << b << endl; // Output: a: 8, b: 3
  return 0;
}

In this example, the max() function returns a reference to an int. The function takes two int parameters and returns a reference to the larger one. In the main() function, the returned reference is assigned the value of 8, which is assigned to the a variable.