? assignments are not expressions ?

[tom@...]

I expected to be able to do:

 while ( X = read() )
 do
  print ( X )
 end

But it seems I must do:

 X = read()
 while X
 do
  print ( X )
  X = read()
 end

Shouldn't an assignment be an expression
evaluating to the value assigned?  It seems
this could be done without breaking anything...?

-Tom