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The assignment
will save the value of the expression in variable y.
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Probably the
most common assignment operator is the equals sign (=).
It is called "assignment" because you are "assigning" a
variable to a value. This operator takes the expression on its
right-hand-side and places it into the variable on its left-hand-side. So,
when you write x = 5, the operator takes the expression on the
right, 5, and stores it in the variable on the left, x.
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This code shows
why you might want to throw away the return value of an operator. Look at the
third line, x = 5. We're using the assignment operator here to
place the value 5 in the variable x.
Since the expression x = 5 returns a value, and we're not using
it, then you could say we are ignoring the return value. However, note that a
few of lines down, we are very interested in the return value of an operator.
The addition operator in the expression x + y returns the
sum of its left-hand-side and right-hand-side. That's how we are able to
assign a value to sum. You can think of it as sum = (x + y), since that's what it's really doing.
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