assignment

assignment

1. Law

a. the transfer to another of a right, interest, or title to property, esp personal property

b. the document effecting such a transfer

c. the right, interest, or property transferred

2. Law (formerly) the transfer, esp by an insolvent debtor, of property in trust for the benefit of his creditors

3. Logic a function that associates specific values with each variable in a formal expression

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(programming)

assignment - Storing the value of an expression in a variable. This is commonly written in the form "v = e". In Algol the assignment operator was ":=" (pronounced "becomes") to avoid mathematicians qualms about writing statements like x = x+1. Assignment is not allowed in functional languages, where an identifier always has the same value. See also referential transparency, single assignment, zero assignment.