The main assignment operator is =, which assigns a value to a variable: $oranges = 12; That's one we've already seen. You can do some tricky stuff with the = operator, such as the following, where we're setting three variables to the same value, 1: <?php $a = $b = $c = 1; echo $a, ", ", $b, ", ", $c; ?> Here's what you see when you run this script: 1, 1, 1 Besides the basic assignment operator, there are "combined operators" for all the binary arithmetic and string operators that allow you to use a value in an expression and then set its value to the result of that expression. Here are the combined operators (we'll see the various operators that are combined with the = sign here in this chapter): += -= *= /= .= %= &= |= ^= <<= >>= These operators can save you a step; for example, say you wanted to add 10 to the value in the variable $my_CD_collection. You could do that like this: $my_CD_collection = $my_CD_collection + 10; Using the combination operator += gives you a shortcut, letting you combine the addition and the assignment into one operation: $my_CD_collection += 10; Not bad. Here's another example, using the string concatenation operator, ., and the division operator, /: <?php $text = "No "; $total = 150; echo $text .= "worries.<BR>"; echo "Average = ", $total /= 3, "<BR>"; ?> Here's what you get from this script: No worries.<BR>Average = 50<BR> |