Re: Why 'statement may have no effect' lint warning here?

[arnold]

Hi.

arnold@skeeve.com wrote:

> > But if function call is used instead of 'var == 1' the warning is
> > gone:
> >
> > BEGIN {
> >     var = 1
> >     print("hi") && var = 3
> >     print "var ==", var
> > }
>
> I need to investigate this further.  In particular, none of gawk,
> mawk or Unix nawk execute the print statement.   Technically,
> print isn't a function, it doesn't return a value.  But none of the
> three issue an error message about its use in an expression.

        When the light went on, it was blinding.
                -- Ed Nather

The use of print here isn't a problem. It's not doing what it
looks like at first glance.  Remember that in awk, print doesn't
have to have parenthesized arguments:

        print a, b, c

or even

        print a

are fine. In the general sense, this is

        print expression

In the case of

        print("hi") && var = 3

the expression is

        ("hi") && var = 3

It's as if it were typed

        print (("hi") && var = 3)

(and thus it prints a 1).  This also explains why there is
no lint error.

HTH,

Arnold