Well, for those used to those expressions, it definitely helps write that code with one line lesser (assignment by itself).

Most likely, the assigned value is stored for use in one of the conditionals, so it really doesn't change any of that.

Let's also understand that we are dealing with a decorated assignment here, so a = (b = c) should be no different from evaluating (b = c). It's not complicated, the way I at least look at it.