Hi, I have come across some elixir repos recently and have noticed “_ = <some_function>” getting used in the code. For example _ = File.read("some_path") Is this a convention? I have heard some people say it denotes that we are aware of a return value of a function, but are signifying that we don…

There’s a dialyzer setting to warn on unused return values and sometimes not handling a return value can be a source for bugs. It might be unnecessary, but still has usefulness beyond the raw functionality of the code.

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'_ = some_function_call' necessary?

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marcandre May 19, 2022, 3:19pm 3

_content = File.read(...) would be much clearer imo.