Let's move on to another kind of C program statement: assignment
statements. Once a variable has been declared, it can be given a value by an
assignment statement. You should already be familiar with the concept of
assignment from the Maple lessons, so we'll go through this
quickly.
To assign a value to a variable in Maple, you use the ``:='' operator
like this:
Digits := 10;
In C, the assignment operator is ``='' instead. For example, the C
statement:
ankle_x = 0.0;
assigns the (floating point) value zero to the (floating point) variable
ankle_x. Go through the program and locate all of the assignment
statements.
Remember that assignment is not the same thing as equality or
definition. For example, consider the following C statement:
count = count + 1;
As an algebraic equation, that statement is nonsense. If you tried to solve it
for the value of COUNT, there would be no solution to the equation. But
assignment statements are not algebraic equations. What does the above
statement really do in a C program?
Click here for the answer.
Eric N. Eide
Hamlet Project
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah