Assignment Operators


Description

The most common assignment operator is equal represented by symbol '=', which assigns or changes the value of left operand to its right operand or expression.

a = a + b;   // adds value of a & b to a

In the above statement 'a' variable is repeated twice, to eliminate such common variables C language offers shorthand way to represent such statements by combining arithmetic operator and assignment operator. Below is the statement that exactly has same effect as one shown above.

a += b;   // adds value of a & b to a

Similarly other assignment operators are:

  • -= substraction and assignment
  • *= multiplication and assignment
  • /= division and assignment
  • %= mudulo division and assignment
  • <<= left shift and assignment
  • >>= right shift and assignment
  • &= bitwise AND and assignment
  • ^= bitwise OR and assignment
  • |= bitwise XOR and assignment.