Which operator is generally used for assignment in programming?

The assignment operator is the single equals sign (=). In programming, this operator is used to assign a value to a variable. For example, if you have a variable called "x" and you want to assign it the value of 5, you would write "x = 5". This operator takes the value on the right and assigns it to the variable on the left.

While other choices like "==" are used for comparison (checking if two values are equal), and "+=" is a compound assignment operator that adds a value to a variable's current value and assigns the result back to that variable (e.g., "x += 2" adds 2 to the current value of x), the single equals sign specifically denotes direct assignment. The symbol ":=" is used in some programming languages as an assignment operator, but it’s not universally adopted and is less common compared to the straightforward "=", which is present in many widely used programming languages such as Python, Java, and C++.