Assignment

Assignment is used to give a new value to a variable:

i = 16;
i = i + 15;

"Variable" is used in a general sense here. Assignment can give values not only to normal variables, but also to member variables in an object, and to positions within an array, a mapping or a multiset:

my_cat->name = "Falkenberg";
a[7] = 8;
english2german["four"] = "vier";
set_of_winners["Tom"] = 0;

An assignment, such as k = 3, is an expression, and its value is the same value as was assigned to the variable. You can use an assignment expression within another expression, for example in a "chain" of assignments that assign the same value to several variables:

Assignments that follow the pattern

i = i + 3;
k = k * 4;
miles_traveled["Anne"] = miles_traveled["Anne"] + 5;
debt[get_name()] = debt[get_name()] + 500;

are very common in programming. That is, an assignment to a variable, where you use the old value of the variable to calculate the new one. To simplify such assignments, Pike has a number of extra assignment operators, looking like operator=, for example:

i += 3;
k *= 4;
miles_traveled["Anne"] += 5;
debt[get_name()] += 500;

In general, the expression

means the same as

variable = variable operator
expression

But note that the variable part is only calculated once. For example, in

the function get_name is only called once.

Note that the increment and decrement operators (i++, ++i, i--, and --i) also change the value of the variable they are used on.

Multi-Assignment

In Pike, you can assign values to several variable at once, taking the values from an array:

int i;
string s;
float f1, f2;

[ i, s, f1, f2 ] = ({ 3, "hi", 2.2, 3.14 });

This syntax is very convenient when you deal with functions who always return a fixed-width array of data.