Return value of an assignment statement?

[Jeff Schwab]

Steve Holden wrote:
> mrstephengross wrote:
>>> What you can't do (that I really miss) is have a tree of assign-and-test
>>> expressions:
>>>         import re
>>>         pat = re.compile('some pattern')
>>>         if m = pat.match(some_string):
>>>             do_something(m)
>>
>> Yep, this is exactly what I am (was) trying to do. Oh well.... Any
>> clever ideas on this front?
>>
> The syntax is the way it is precisely to discourage that kind of clever 
> idea. Of course, people nevertheless manage to work around the 
> restriction to try and make their Python read like some other language 
> they are more familiar with, and most of the time they get away with it.
> 
> The fat remains that in programming there *is* such a thing as being too 
> clever, and Python's syntax deliberately discourages that.

This isn't "clever."  It's what most of us were taught, from the 
beginning, was best practice.  In some languages (including C and C++) 
the above is extremely common and perfectly acceptable.