It's not only not a trick, it's how the language is designed with the intention of doing it like this. To me it's like complaining that (++a) is a "trick" that

It's not only not a trick, it's how the language is designed with the intention of doing it like this. To me it's like complaining that (++a) is a "trick" that lets you use secret temp values that are hard to understand. I mean.. _I guess_, but it's C so it seems like the problem is that you don't like C.