Consider the following generic line of code:

    if ( handle const h = CreateHandle( 0xff ) ) return h;

Right now I'm patching the GNU g++ compiler, inside the file
"gcc/cp/typeck.cc", inside the function
"finish_class_member_access_expr" because I want it to return early if
it's dealing with a chimeric_ptr. However if it's not dealing with a
chimeric_ptr, I want it to keep going. So right now the line of code
I'm adding looks like this:

        if ( tree const t = check_for_chimera(name, object) ) return t;

To be very generic about what the above line of code is doing:
   (1) It invokes a function (let's call it the callee function).
   (2) If the callee's return value after conversion to bool yields
true, then the callee's return value is immediately returned from the
enclosing function.
    (3) If the callee's return value after conversion to bool yields
false, the enclosing function keeps going.

So to break it down logically, here's what's going on:

    auto const retval = SomeFunction();
    if ( static_cast<bool>(retval) ) return retval;

Now personally I think that this would be much more succinctly
expressed as follows:

    return if SomeFunction();

And so if we take another look at the line of code I'm adding to the
GNU g++ compiler:

        if ( tree const t = check_for_chimera(name, object) ) return t;

It could become:

        return if check_for_chimera(name, object);

I can think of loads of times over the past 20+ years when I've coded
a function that does exactly this -- it returns immediately if the
callee succeeded, or it keeps going if the callee failed. This can be
simplified with "return if". And you'll see the benefit of it when you
have multiple function calls:

Symbol *resolve_symbol(Name &name, Scope &scope)
{
    return if try_fast_path(name, scope);
    return if try_cached(name, scope);
    return if try_builtin_table(name);

    // Slow path:
    . . .
}

This feature is about readability and convenience.
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