Chapter 7. Operators

An operator is a symbol (e.g., = , + , > , etc.) that causes VB.NET to take an action. That action might be an assignment of a value to a variable, the addition of two values, or a comparison of two values, etc.

In the previous chapters, you've seen a number of operators at work. For example, in Chapter 5 you saw the assignment operator used. The single equal sign ( = ) is used to assign a value to a variable, in this case the value 15 to the Integer variable myVariable:

 Dim myVariable As Integer = 15 

In Chapter 6, you saw more sophisticated operators, such as the greater than comparison operator (>) used to compare two values:

 If valueOne > valueTwo Then 

The preceding If statement compares valueOne with valueTwo; if the former is larger than the latter, the test evaluates true, and the If statement executes.

This chapter will consider many of the operators used in VB.NET in some detail.