diff --git a/mlir/lib/Dialect/SparseTensor/Transforms/Sparsification.cpp b/mlir/lib/Dialect/SparseTensor/Transforms/Sparsification.cpp
--- a/mlir/lib/Dialect/SparseTensor/Transforms/Sparsification.cpp
+++ b/mlir/lib/Dialect/SparseTensor/Transforms/Sparsification.cpp
@@ -798,8 +798,7 @@
     if (!rhs) {
       // Only unary and binary are allowed to return uninitialized rhs
       // to indicate missing output.
-      Kind kind = merger.exp(exp).kind;
-      assert(kind == kUnary || kind == kBinary);
+      assert(merger.exp(exp).kind == kUnary || merger.exp(exp).kind == kBinary);
     } else {
       genInsertionStore(codegen, rewriter, op, t, rhs);
     }