Question

I stumbled upon the following construction in C++:

bool result = false;
for(int i = 0; i<n; i++){
  result |= TryAndDoSomething(i);
}

I supposed that this |= was a shortcut for the OR operator, and that result would equal true in the end if at least one of these calls to TryAndDoSomething had returned true.

But now I am wondering if more than one call can actually return true. Indeed if we extend the operation as:

result = result || TryAndDoSomething(i);

Then the method will be called only if return evaluated to false, that is, if no other call before returned true. Thus after one call returning true, no other call will be done.

Is this the correct interpretation?

Answer 1

On booleans, | yields the same result as ||, but doesn’t short-circuit. The right operand of |= is always evaluated.