computer science question

Question

Can someone please tell me the difference between = and == ?

Answer 1

Hi Mike,

Those two, "=" and "==" can be confusing at times.

We are talking about C and it's myriad derivative languages (like Java....).

The symbol = is used to assign a value to a variable. When you are reading code, you say gets:

x=1 "ex gets one"

So when the code is executed, the value of x becomes 1.

The symbol == is used to test for a condition in logical expressions. I like to say when you see equals equals then the variable really does equal something. It returns a true or false answer.

Use == in combination with a logical expression to test the conditions:

if (x==42) { This little snippet would assign y the value of 2 ONLY when x was 42

y=2; If x is not 42, the value of y stays the same

}

Hope this helps.