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

I found this wondering about the rules of declaring a variable then using it immediately in subsequent conditions in the same statement.

Thanks to previous answer for the codepad link, I made my own to test the theory. Spoiler alert: It works.

http://codepad.org/xTwzTwGR