Even now, and I'm pretty sure back then, the relevant warning in GCC is suppressed if the assignment occurs in parentheses, like it did in the diff (clang I bel

Even now, and I'm pretty sure back then, the relevant warning in GCC is suppressed if the assignment occurs in parentheses, like it did in the diff (clang I believe has the same behaviour). So you would likely need a static analysis tool to flag up the behaviour, and those are quite noisy at the best of times.