Assignment Operators in C

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In this class, we will try to understand Assignment Operators in C.

The complete class on arithmetic operators.

There are two types of assignment operators.

The image below shows the classification of assignment operators.

The simple operator ” = ” is used to store a constant value, the value of another variable or the result of expression evaluation into a variable.

For example, a = 15, b = c, or c = 20 + 40.

A critical point to understand is the assignment operator requires an Lvalue as its left operand.

An Lvalue represents an object stored in computer memory, not a constant or computation result.

An object stored in the computer memory means a variable.

The left operand of the variable should always be a variable.

It should not be an expression or a constant.

For example, 15 = b, a + b = 23, such a left operand use is not allowed.

The other type of assignment operators is the compound assignment operators.

C supports a lot of compound assignment operators.

In this class, we will discuss only a few of them. [ +=, -=, *=, /=, %= ]

The compound assignment operator uses the old value of the variable to compute the new value.

For example, a += 2 is how we use the compound assignment operator.

Here a and 2 are operands, and += is a compound assignment operator.

+= means the old value of a is added with 2, and the new value is stored in the a.

a += 2 is a short form of a = a + 2 expression.

If the value of a is initialized to 12. [a = 12]

a += 2 or a = a + 2 results in 14.

The new value 14 will be stored in a.