Why Do C# Assignment Expressions Return a Value?

Side effects and return values ​​of C# assignment expressions

Unlike many programming languages, where assignment statements only perform value assignments, C# allows assignment expressions to produce values. This peculiar behavior raises the question: why are assignment expressions that return a value needed?

Side effects in expressions

The answer lies in the concept of side effects. While common sense holds that statements should only trigger side effects, C# violates this convention by allowing expressions to have side effects. Specifically, assignment expressions fall into this category.

Convenience and idiomatic code

The reasoning behind this feature stems from practicality and idiomatic conventions borrowed from C-like languages. In these languages, assignment operations typically leave the assigned value in a register for subsequent use. To take advantage of this, C# introduced assignment expressions, which essentially return the newly assigned value.

Code Generator Simplified

This feature is easy for code generators to implement as they can utilize the registers containing assigned values ​​for further calculations. Ultimately, this design choice allows developers to write cleaner and more idiomatic code.

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