Assignment Statements
An assignment statement uses the assignment operator (=
) to assign the result of an expression to a variable. In its simplest form, you code it like this:
variable = expression;
For example:
int a = (b * c) / 4;
A compound assignment operator is an operator that performs a calculation and an assignment at the same time. All Java binary arithmetic operators (that is, the ones that work on two operands) have equivalent compound assignment operators:
Operator |
Description |
|
Addition and assignment |
|
Subtraction and assignment |
|
Multiplication and assignment |
|
Division and assignment |
|
Remainder and assignment |
For example, the statement
a += 10;
is equivalent to
a = a + 10;
An assignment expression has a return value just as any other expression does; the return value is the value that’s assigned to the variable. For example, the return value of the expression a = 5
is 5
. This allows you to create some interesting, but ill-advised, expressions by using assignment expressions in the middle of other expressions. For example:
int a;
int b;
a = (b = 3) * 2; // a is 6, b is 3
Using assignment operators in the middle of an expression can make the expression harder to understand, so I don’t recommend that.