You also have a tireless automated assistant who can check for this: the compiler. Clang warns about this by default: warning: using the result of an assign

You also have a tireless automated assistant who can check for this: the compiler. Clang warns about this by default: warning: using the result of an assignment as a condition without parentheses. note: place parentheses around the assignment to silence this warning. note: use '==' to turn this assignment into an equality comparison. " gcc gives you similar warnings with -Wall or -Wparentheses: warning: suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value [-Wparentheses] Why not stick with the more natural phrasing and let the machine handle the tedious work?