why do you guys assign actions into variables?

[ShawnD]

when i see you guys post stuff, you always assign actions to a variable name. for exmaple, the command
mail([e-mail],hello joe, testing joe)
you guys would always write it as
$mail = mail([e-mail],hello joe, testing joe)
then have something like
if(blah || blah2){
$mail
}

why do you guys always do that? most of you guys do it.

[the_Igel]

You're wrong. No one does it 🙂

However, one often does

$mail = mail("[e-mail]", "hello joe", "testing joe");
if($mail){ 
 foo($bar);
} 

That's because most functions (including mail()) return some values, that show, whether function was executed succesfully or not. Or, of course, it may return something more interesting...