There are three kinds of statements in programming: assignment,
control, and operation. I shall discuss each of them in greater
depth in the respective tutorials on Python. In the next couple of pages, however, I will discuss their basic characteristics.
Assignment statements are perhaps the simplest of the
three. In assignment, the value on the right side of the equal sign
('=') is assigned to a variable name on the left. The more common way of describing the statement "x = 25" is to say that 'x equals 25'. As long as x is equivalent to '25', one may refer to the variable 'x' instead of '25' wherever needed. However, one must be careful. If a program is dependent upon x being '25' and x is later assigned a new value, perhaps '26', then every calculation that relies upon x being equivalent to '25' will change, sometimes with unpredictable results.
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