Question

I recently came across some code like this:

parent && parent.removeChild(this);

Which takes the place of:

if(parent)
    parent.removeChild(this);

I see how it works, I’m just having a lot of trouble explaining the syntax to myself in plain English so that I can implement it elsewhere (I guess I don’t fully understand what’s happening, I just know how it works in this particular case). For example, the below which I use often reads easily to me as “value is a or b (in the absence of a)”.

var url:String = root.loaderInfo.parameters.url || "http://test.com/";

Answer 1

You can think of it as this:

Execute the statement on the right hand side if and only if the
statement on the left hand side returns a true value.