About assignment statement

An assignment statement in Java 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.

Technically, an assignment is an expression, not a statement. Thus, a = 5 is an assignment expression, not an assignment statement. It becomes an assignment statement only when you add a semicolon to the end.

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;