my gut reaction was "no, that's exactly why they don't want these sorts of constructs" but the alternative (only allowing it in init statements) is worse I thin

my gut reaction was "no, that's exactly why they don't want these sorts of constructs" but the alternative (only allowing it in init statements) is worse I think. Only allowing in init statements is how you end up with the c++ initialization mess. Re; your example, what about tmp := a ? b : c f(tmp, d, e) Even in C++ that's likely how I'd write it.