Rabbit Out of the Hat!!, Please help explain this hocus pocus!

Question

If you run the code below', you'll get 1 1 as your result, please help explain to me how the value of the variable a became 1 and also how that of b became 1. Thanks.

Here's the code:

int main() {
int a = 7, b = 1;
if(a = 8 || b == 5);
cout << a * b;
cout << " " << a;

Answer 1

DevAbdul

Single equal (=) is used to assign value so here you have assigned (8 || b == 5) to variable a inside if condition

so (8 || b == 5) will return 1
so a would be 1
So a * b = 1
So 11

Note: b is already 1

Answer 2

DevAbdul
A bit of additional info on short circuit evaluation of logical operators

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_logical

And about short circuit evaluation itself

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-circuit_evaluation