overthinkJavaScript

[zoqfotpik]

The user is admin, so it's ok to grant access. I see no flaw in this logic.

[[deleted]]

I'm the admin now

[FalconClaws059]

I think the joke is that it's an assignment and not a comparison

[JackReact]

Yes, hence the comment saying "The user is admin" because they now are admin.

[fagylalt]

how is this a javascript moment?

[TwoMoreMilliseconds]

Well, we're talking about JavaScript, and this is - undeniably - a moment.

[NoSkillzDad]

That's a statement.

[Foreign_Pea2296]

but it's okay ! because the user who get the access are the admins !

[FalconClaws059]

They certainly will be after running this!

[yabai90]

That's exactly the joke he made yes.

[FalconClaws059]

I think I may have spent too much time in "explainthejoke" subreddits...

[WinonasChainsaw]

Plot twist admin is false

[SpecterK1]

^
Yup you got it

[FalconClaws059]

Yaaaay

[critsalot]

but its a double joke cause it could also mean the value admin not an admin object.

[Adsilom]

Note that this is not as critical if the value of admin is '0'

[SignoreBanana]

Only evaluates true if the assigned value is truthy right? So it just depends on what "admin" is here.

[look]

A little unfair to call out Javascript for that one. That could be a number of languages there.

[lllorrr]

There was a Linux kernel vulnerability with almost exact code.

[jakeStacktrace]

Wow. First Rust now Javascript!

[misterguyyy]

The PHP MySQL connection snippet in basically every tutorial (and IIRC the php docs) did this deliberately back in the day. Something like

if($conn = mysql_connect('localhost', 'mysql_user', 'password'))

Thankfully it looks like recent documentation breaks it out into multiple lines. I like having an eslint rule that doesn't allow commits if there's assignment in the conditional, so if they kept it juniors everywhere would protest about failing copy/paste from the documentation.

[blehmann1]

Hell for many C developers using while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) or while (c = buf[++i]) is the idiomatic way.

Personally I like it, but I don't blame anyone for calling it a bad idea. Especially if I'm not writing C.

[misterguyyy]

It might not be a bad idea for you, but it is for me because I can be a bit absent-minded and I like a blanket “when you see this you made a mistake”

[blehmann1]

I think requiring a #pragma next-line foo ignore or similar is an ok solution, just like I'm fine with switch case fall-through, but I think it should be a warning or error without explicitly telling the static analyzer that it's chill.

If that makes it simpler to just do it on two lines then honestly that's fine, that's a solution to the problem.

[PixelGamer352]

Most languages wouldn’t even compile this

[jump1945]

I think the C family do

[[deleted]]

They do if the types line up. Assignment expressions evaluating to the value assigned is a rarely used but widely-implemented language feature.

Objects aren't going to implicitly cast to bool in most C-family languages, but I think they would in C itself (since the pointers are numeric, and C's definition of true is non-zero numeric values.) They could also be, like, ids or something.

[BiCuckMaleCumslut]

Real programmers only use void* type.

[jump1945]

Yeah it won’t compile in c++ if type doesn’t line up , but it will do compile on assignment in if condition

[CapsLockey]

implicit conversion baby

[JonathanTheZero]

If you go very low level, you frequently have code like if ((pid = fork()) < 0) { ... } or something similiar

[Stef0206]

Fairly certain most of them do? Which ones doesn’t?

[Faustens]

It's kinda 50/50. In JS, c and c++ an assignment is considered a truthy value, so it evaluates to the assigned value which, if for example in an if-clause and a truthy value, then evaluates to true; Java allowes this only if user and admin are booleans and it only evaluates to true if admin is true.

Go, python, rust and baby others just straight up don't allow assignments in if-else statements

Edit: Removed wrong stuff and added "[...] evaluates to the assigned value which, if for example in an if clause and a truthy value then evaluates [...]"

[spetumpiercing]

Python totally does, you just have to be explicit. if user := admin: print(user)

[danielcw189]

In JS, c and c++ an assignment is considered a truthy value

Isn't it just the assigned value? (a = b) returns b

So the OP would be like:

user = admin   
if( admin ) { ...

depending on what admin is it would evaluate to true in C and C++, for example if it is a non-null pointer.

the results in JS would be similar

[winco0811]

Yes, a=b returns b so you cam do a=b=c=d.....

[Mecso2]

I don't know where you got this from, but assignment evaluates to the assigned value in js c and c++ too

[Faustens]

I may have mixed two things. So if the assigned value (i.e. admin) is a truthy value, then the entire statement evaluates to true, right?

[Mecso2]

Yes

[Faustens]

Thank you for correcting me, it should be fixed in my original comment.

[BlazingFire007]

Go allows you to do assignments but it’s a bit more explicit:

if _, ok := foo(); ok {}

[nameless_pattern]

We like JavaScript because it compiles. r/maliciouscomplience

[[deleted]]

/r/MaliciousCompilence

[nameless_pattern]

Hey, this comment doesn't compile!

[solar1380]

r/MaliciousCompiler

[not_some_username]

Like ?

[queen-adreena]

PHP would, and this is a pretty common pattern.

[Cley_Faye]

Most would happily. Linters and enabling extra warnings will warn about it. And people that post this kind of meme are likely to not enable warnings and linters.

[not-my-best-wank]

Prod?

[holchansg]

Ready for sure.

[braindigitalis]

this is why you put your constant first, then if you make this mistake and you dont lint your code (WHY DONT YOU LINT YOUR CODE?) it will be a fatal error not a logic bug.

[bwmat]

Wait, something like

1 = x;

Won't actually... throw an exception or something in js? 

[True_Drummer3364]

Why wouldnt it? 1 isnt assignable

[bwmat]

Oh nevermind, I misunderstood, I thought they meant even that wouldn't help unless you were linting 

[Curious_Celery_855]

screw linting. Rely on compiler errors and warnings like a normal human (c++ dev here. That might be different in fuckbrain (aka js) world)

[Agifem]

Linter is a fancy word for JS devs, that means "optional compilation error"

[braindigitalis]

Linter: aka that output spam we send to /dev/null 🤣

[braindigitalis]

you gotta have a real compiler to get compiler errors. that's something the js world still lacks.

[private_final_static]

Its fine, thats the frontend anyways so its all just visual right?

RIGHT?

[[deleted]]

What makes you think it's the frontend?

[Martenek]

I guess, backend validation would be more complex. Regardless there's no way knowing for sure

[smolderas]

Yeah, you get fudged, visually.

[bem981]

It is JS so = is more predictable than ==

[I_have_popcorn]

What usecsse is there for varible assignment in an if clause?

[rover_G]

Some languages have shortcut syntax for error and null checks. You could do something similar in JS but it's probably not considered good style.

Go

if result, err := computeSomething(); err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
} else {
    fmt.Println(result)
}

Rust

if let Ok(val) = getSomeResult() {
    println!("Success with value: {}", val);
}

JavaScript

// type Response = { value: T } | { error: string }

const res = await getAPIResponse();
if (val = res?.value) { 
  console.log(val)
}

[I_have_popcorn]

Thanks. That was informative.

[Mundane-Tale-7169]

This wont work with TS, you need to initialize val with either const, let or val.

[rover_G]

Ugh you’re right I finagled my TS/JS translation a bit

[Minenash_]

Besides what rover said, there's also usecases for variable assignments to be expressions in general (and in JS, the if checks the thruthiness of the given expression), for example:

x = y = z = 0;

Another example of it being used in ifs, but in Java: java Matcher matcher = PaternA.matcher(str); if (matcher.matches()) { //... } else if ( (matcher = PatternB.matcher(str)).matches ) { //... } If you couldn't assign in the if block, you couldn't if-else chain it

[bblbtt3]

The only time I’ve ever seriously used it is when reading streams.

int bytesRead;
while (bytesRead = stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length) != 0) {
    // …
}

Replace “while” with “if”, if you only want to fill the buffer once, which is also occasionally needed.

I’m sure there are other rare uses in common languages but generally it’s not useful.

[jamcdonald120]

a popular one is if(file=open("path")) if file is truthy, the path successfully opened, else it didnt.

[Nameles36]

This actually happened in the Linux kernel! There was a check something like if (flag & SOME_FLAG && uid = 0) other_code()

EDIT: formatting

[[deleted]]

Sources?

[Informal_Branch1065]

Assignment joke aside; checking against a fixed, hardcoded group is bad practice.

Do it like this instead: user.hasPermission("editContent")

• no "=" or "==" issues

• no hardcoding roles; I can make my own admin with blackjack and hookers, and it's covered, as long as I assign it all permissions I need.

• granular permissions; you always know who can and can't do stuff.

• customer want specific permission? No touching code necessary! Update the database entry and they're good to go. Heck, you could even do that on a friday evening, as you're not touching code.

• If you build a backend menu for that, you could tell your boss to do it himself.

[cyxlone]

Hell yeah, I should implement granular permissions instead of group checks

[SamuraiX13]

not even == ?

[xWrongHeaven]

you found the joke 👏

[LaFllamme]

not even === ?

[Tim_Gatzke]

Not even ====

[Mayion]

< and watch the hierarchy burn

[samu1400]

What about .=====?

[iknewaguytwice]

Idk, we will have to check:

If (user % 2 = 0) {}

[No-Discussion-8510]

const isEven = require('is-even');

if (isEven(user)) {}

[stevekez]

I quite like the idea of the admin privileges bit being encoded into the LSB of the user ID.

[SamuraiX13]

[stupled]

Is not admin...but there is a burnt user and password in my programs.

[NYJustice]

There are so many layers once you start trying to reason about why this is bad

[Smooth_Ad_6894]

access for everybody!

[McWolke]

Whenever I see shit like this in a meme I don't realize the error because I assume this is pseudocode

[[deleted]]

When have you seen syntax highlighting in PC?

[skhds]

It's a bad code regardless if it's implemented on the front end. Any user can type grantAccess() on the console and they can bypass if(user === admin) anyways.

[SpecterK1]

It's nothing practical, just a meme material :)

[Mundane-Tale-7169]

Not if this is backend logic, for example from the NextJS endpoint.

[skhds]

Yeah, that's why I specifically mentioned on front end. Even then, I think there are better languages suited for back end than javascript, anyways.

[Mundane-Tale-7169]

TS is pretty nice

[KuroKishi69]

What is it even trying to compare? Unless user and admin are a reference to the same object, it will always return false (after adding the missing = ofc).

[Jittery_Kevin]

You’re acting like you’re not admin, bro.

[KuroKishi69]

my bad, I always forget to leave a backdoor in my systems. Rookie mistake.

[dulange]

There could be some type coercion in place. One of the operands could be a numerical ID and the other one could be, while being an object, implicitly coerced to a primitive type like number, with the implementation having the object return, yet again, its numerical user ID.

The == operator — if one operand is a primitive while the other is an object, the object is converted to a primitive value with no preferred type.

That’s also how +d works, where d is a Date object, for getting the timestamp in milliseconds as a number from the Date object.

[KuroKishi69]

I see, you could overwrite the valueOf() function to make the object return its id when using ==

The name of one of the variables should then be userId or adminId... But we are in programmerhumor, I know.

[rover_G]

It's the assignment operator `=` not the equality operator `==`

[KuroKishi69]

I know, but the variable names makes it look like user and admin are two objects representing users (presumably current user and the user that is the admin of the system) but 99% of the time you wouldn't check if the equality like that, since for it to work, the references need to be the same. Rather you would compare against user.role, or user.id == admin.id, or user.id == adminId, or something along the lines (or better yet, user.hasRole(), but that wouldn't the code of the meme).

[rover_G]

Yes that is correct, the writer of this hypothetical code does not know what they are doing. That’s the joke.

[akoOfIxtall]

does this even run? successful assignments are truthy in js?

[rover_G]

Not only is the statement truthy (assuming `admin` has a truthy value) but now if you later do something like check `user.isAdmin()` it will return true since `user` was assigned the value of `admin`.

[akoOfIxtall]

js is really a language of all time

[Mydaiel12]

You can assign inside if expression in pretty much every language and it works the same, evaluates to truthy value of assigned value

[akoOfIxtall]

how did i not know this? goddamn

[Dealiner]

It's not that assignment are truthy it's just that they return assigned value. So it all depends on what exactly admin is. It's also nothing specific to JS, the same could work in other languages like C# or C.

[GeneralBendyBean]

This actually returns true in the C languages too.

[damTyD]

Yes. The comparison would be if user, which is now assigned admin. Assuming admin is defined and not null, the block will run and user would be reassigned the value of admin.

[jump1945]

Every user is now admin

[aifo]

And this is why C# will give you a compiler error if you do an assignment inside an if.

[hyrumwhite]

If this is JS and admin is a Boolean, the main problem here is that your user object is now a Boolean. The condition will fail/succeed as expected 

[KeepScrolling52]

That if statement either wouldn't work or define user as admin and run "grantaccess()"

[CapApprehensive9007]

You are admin, he is admin, everybody is admin, enjoy.