Truthy and Falsy Assignment. Reassign the value: what's the correct way?

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#1

Hello!
Cannot understand what’s wrong with this code:

=====

let tool = ‘’;
tool = ‘marker’;

// Use short circuit evaluation to assign writingUtensil variable below:
let writingUtensil;
if (tool)
{
writingUtensil = tool;
} else {
writingUtensil = ‘pen’;
}

# console.log( `The ${writingUtensil} is mightier than the sword.` );

======

It returns correct result without errors, but at the button appears notification " Please do not edit writingUtensil directly" and it doesn’t allow me to continue…

Link to the exercise:
https://www.codecademy.com/courses/introduction-to-javascript/lessons/control-flow/exercises/truthy-falsy-operators?action=resume_content_item

Thanks for any help

#2

Hello, @ajax4973958360.

I’m not sure if you are on step 1 or step 2 of the exercise, but for step 1, we need to leave tool assigned an empty string ''. We also need to use the short circuit evaluation rather than if ... else to make the assignment to writingUtensil.
Consider this example using short circuit evaluation:

let malady = ''; //an empty string is falsy
let attribute = malady || 'bad breath'; //since malady has been assigned a falsy value, the string 'bad breath' is assigned to attribute
console.log(`My dog has ${attribute}.`);

Output:

My dog has bad breath.

If we assign malady a truthy value:

let malady = 'fleas'; //a non-empty string is truthy
let attribute = malady || 'bad breath'; //since malady has been assigned a truthy value, its value, 'fleas' is assigned to attribute
console.log(`My dog has ${attribute}.`);

Output:

My dog has fleas.