Can I define a variable in a PHP if condition?

Question

For example, can I do:

if ($my_array = wp_get_category($id)) {
    echo \"asdf\";
} else {
    echo \"1234\";
}

If nothing is returned by t

Answer 1

Yes, that will work, and the pattern is used quite often.

If $my_array is assigned a truthy value, then the condition will be met.

CodePad.

The inverse is also true...

If nothing is returned by the function, I want to go into the else statement.

A function that doesn't return anything will return NULL, which is falsey.

CodePad.