Set variable in if statement expression

Question

I ran across some interesting code today. I tried to find out if this is a feature of PHP or if I am missing something, but was unable to find anything on Google. Probably becau

Answer 1

Yes, this is a feature. It's like:

$a=$b=5;

But in this case, imagine the bool result of if as var $a.

However, IDE's are used to complain about solutions like this because of == vs. = as a very common possible bug source.