Value assignment inside for-loop in Scala

The difference between the two is, that the first one is a definition which is created by pattern matching and the second one is a value inside a function literal. See Programming in Scala, Section 23.1 For Expressions:

  for {
    p <- persons              // a generator
    n = p.name                // a definition
    if (n startsWith "To")    // a filter
  } yield n

You see the real difference when you compile sources with scalac -Xprint:typer <filename>.scala:

object X {
  val x1 = for (i <- (1 to 5); x = i*2) yield x
  val x2 = for (i <- (1 to 5)) yield { val x = i*2; x }
}

After code transforming by the compiler you will get something like this:

private[this] val x1: scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int] =
  scala.this.Predef.intWrapper(1).to(5).map[(Int, Int), scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[(Int, Int)]](((i: Int) => {
    val x: Int = i.*(2);
    scala.Tuple2.apply[Int, Int](i, x)
  }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[(Int, Int)]).map[Int, scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int]]((
    (x$1: (Int, Int)) => (x$1: (Int, Int) @unchecked) match {
      case (_1: Int, _2: Int)(Int, Int)((i @ _), (x @ _)) => x
    }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[Int]);

private[this] val x2: scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int] =
  scala.this.Predef.intWrapper(1).to(5).map[Int, scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int]](((i: Int) => {
    val x: Int = i.*(2);
    x
  }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[Int]);

This can be simplified to:

val x1 = (1 to 5).map {i =>
    val x: Int = i * 2
    (i, x)
  }.map {
    case (i, x) => x
  }

val x2 = (1 to 5).map {i =>
    val x = i * 2
    x
  }

Instantiating variables inside for loops makes sense if you want to use that variable the for statement, like:

for (i <- is; a = something; if (a)) {
   ...
}

And the reason why your list is outdated, is that this translates to a foreach call, such as:

term_array.foreach {
   term => val list= hashmap.get(term)
} foreach {
  ...
}

So when you reach ..., your hashmap has already been changed. The other example translates to:

term_array.foreach {
   term => val list= hashmap.get(term)
   ...
}