Assignments in conditions should be avoided

Possible accidental assignment, assignments in conditions should be avoided

Quote:

Originally Posted by code green

which seems less professional.

Originally Posted by code green

I have had a Google and it seems the reasoning behind this is to avoid the schoolboy error of confusing

and Are script editors now assuming the lowest common denomitor of programming skill?

I wonder how the following code is evaluated: if ($data = somefunc())

Originally Posted by Dormilich

I don’t think an assignment can fail… it’s usually expressions that fail.

Originally Posted by Markus

An assignment is an expression?

Originally Posted by Dormilich

is my English that bad?

Assignment operations in PHP have the "side effect" of returning the
assignment. For example:

function return_false() {
return false;
}

var_dump(return_false()); //bool(false);
var_dump($a = return_false()); //bool(false);
var_dump($a = 1); // int(1)
var_dump($a = "hello world!"); //string...

So the same thing that allows you to do:

$a = $b = $c = $d = 154;

which works because "$d = 154" returns 154, which is assigned to $c,
which returns 154... is how assignment in conditionals or looping
works:
if($a = return_false()) { }
var_dump($a); //bool(false)

if($a = "hello") {}
var_dump($a); //string, "hello"

So what's really happening is the return value of the expression "$a =
____" is evaluated and that's used to determine the truth of the
conditionality. if($a = return_false()) is exactly the same thing as
if(return_false()) save for you "capture" the output of the function,
rather than just allow the conditional operator to see it. It's
functionally equivalent to $a = return_false(); if($a) {} but it's
important to understand that __assigning a variable to a value in PHP
is an expression with a return value___ and that return value is the
value that you assigned to the variable.