Walrus Operator
The Walrus operator allows you to perform assignment expresssions, where the second operand to your assignment is the value of the expression.
Examples
if a := get_value() then -- 'a' was assigned a truthy value.else -- 'a' was assigned a falsy value.end--> This code is semantically equal.local a = get_value()if a then -- 'a' was assigned a truthy value.else -- 'a' was assigned a falsy value.end
Expressions for the Walrus operator may be evaluated multiple times in circumstances like loops.
local function get() return trueendwhile a := get() do --> This will loop forever. It'll keep evaluating `a := get()`, just like any other condition.end
Like any other expression, you can also do things like this:
if (a := math.random(1, 10)) < 5 then print("A is less than five! Value: " .. a)else print("A is greater than five! Value: " .. a)end
- The Walrus operator can be used anywhere an expression is accepted.
- The Walrus operator does not support tuple assignment.
This feature is inspired from Python's implementation, which can be found here.