Why do GuardClauses return a value and not the GuardClause or void?

[Marvin-Brouwer]

Hi I was just wondering why all the GuardClauses return the original value they were validating?
I tried using them to chain into a property but it just doesn't look right:

If I compare these approaches, the latter looks more readable to me.
So I'm just wondering what the usecase for the return value might be.

[amal-stack]

The purpose of the return value is to simplify value assignment in constructors.

class Person
{
    public string Name { get; }
    public string Age { get; }
    public Person(string name, int age)
    {
        // return values used for assignment to Name and Age
         Name = Guard.Against.NullOrWhiteSpace(name); 
         Age = Guard.Against.NegativeOrZero(age);
    }
}

Without the return value, the constructor would be of four lines of code instead of two.
This has already been answered in #158.

[Marvin-Brouwer]

Aha, I see.
Maybe it violates the single responsibility principle a bit, but they're guidelines anyway.

Thanks.

[ardalis]

@amal-stack has the answer. It's purely for pragmatic reasons to make constructor assignment simpler.