Question

I’ve seen something like this used in WordPress:

if($aVariable=aFunction()){
  // If aFunction() returned true
}

What is this called and where can I find more information about it?

Answer 1

“Inline assignment” is what I’d call it.

It is equivalent to:

$aVariable=aFunction();
if($aVariable){ 
  // If aFunction() returned true 
} 

And if $aVariable isn’t used somewhere else, it is pointless to do this.
So someplace else there needs to a useful read of $aVariable.

There isn’t a lot else to say about this, except that it saves a few keystrokes, when you need to check the result of aFunction more than once.