Compiler warning - suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value

Question

When I try to compile the piece of code below, I get this warning:

warning: suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value

Why does this happen? This is a rather common idiom, I believe. I even use something like it earlier on my code.

struct PIDList* 
getRecordForPID(struct PIDList* list, pid_t pid) {
    while(list = list->next)
        if (list->pid == pid)
            return list;

    return NULL;
}

Answer 1

Be explicit - then the compiler won't warn that you perhaps made a mistake.

while ( (list = list->next) != NULL )

or

while ( (list = list->next) )

Some day you'll be glad the compiler told you, people do make that mistake ;)