“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

Imagine you have a sealed class Foo, with `class Bar(x: String) : Foo()` and `Baz() : Foo()`.

Now, imagine you have a method, returning an object of type Foo: `fun foo(): Foo`

And you want to pattern match on the result of this method:

  when(foo()) {
      is Bar -> ...
      is Baz -> ...
  }

Now imagine Kotlin had that feature; then we could just do the following:

  when(foo = foo()) {
    is Bar -> foo.x
    is Baz -> ...
  }

Conditionals need an expression, and assignment fits the bill, so it works.

What I'm thinking of here is Rust's match statements, which do give you the ability to make use of those intermediary values by making use of Rust's enum type.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/second-edition/ch06-02-match....

    if(malloc(10000 * sizeof foo) == NULL) {
      // Error processing
    } // No need for an else branch here.

No, but it has a lot to do with the way humans write code. This is the source of the bug, not the logic. eg Why bother having whitespace that the compiler can't use (typically)? Human readability.

The concession to not take into account human failing, is pathological.

    int success = NULL;

    if(success = malloc(...)) {
    }
    if(success = malloc(...)) {
    }
    if(success = malloc(...)) {
    }

    char* p = NULL;
    if (p = malloc(...)) {
      ...
    }

    guard let value = myOptional else {
        // Handle absence
    }
    // Use value

    if let value = myOptional {
        // Use value
    }

It's very good.

    match foo() {
        Bar @ foo => foo.x,
        Baz => ...,
    }