[Tim]
To my eyes, this is genuinely harder to follow, despite its relative brevity:
while total != (total := total + term):
[Antoine]
Does it even work? Perhaps if the goal is to stop when total is NaN, but otherwise?
[Chris]
Yes, it does, because the first "total" is looked up before the rebinding happens. It's 100% unambiguous to the compiler... but still pretty unclear to a human. And I think the multiple use of 'total' is to blame for that. So I agree with Tim that this particular example is better in longhand.
[Antoine]
"Better" is an understatement :-( Now that I understood it (thanks for the explanation),
Ah, sorry - I had no idea it was the "left to right evaluation" part you weren't seeing. Next time explain why you think something is broken?
the shorthand version appears completely bonkers.
I wouldn't go that far, but I already said I wouldn't write it that way. However, without looking at real code, people are just flat-out guessing about how bad - or good - things _can_ get, no matter how confident they sound. So at least give me credit for presenting the _worst_ brief binding-expression example you've seen too ;-)