Semicolon at end of 'if' statement

Question

Today, after half an hour of searching for a bug, I discovered that it is possible to put a semicolon after an if statement instead of code, like this:

if(a          


        

Answer 1

Just a FYI about the usability and what difference it makes or can make if there is a statement like that

Consider a piece of code like the following.

int a = 10;
if ((a = 50) == 50);

System.out.println("Value of a = " + a);

Clearly in this case, the if statement does change the output. So a statement like that can make a difference.

This is a situation where this could be useful or better to say have an impact on program.