EXPRESSIONS

Simple Assignment Operator

=

15.25.1

15.25   Assignment Operators

There are 12

assignment operators

; all are syntactically right associative (they

group right to left). Thus,

a=b=c

 means

a=(b=c)

, which assigns the value of

c

 to

b

 and then assigns the value of

b

 to

a

.

AssignmentExpression:

ConditionalExpression

Assignment

Assignment:

LeftHandSide AssignmentOperator AssignmentExpression

LeftHandSide:

ExpressionName

FieldAccess

ArrayAccess

AssignmentOperator: one of

= *= /= %= +=  = <<= >>= >>>= &= ^= |=

The result of the first operand of an assignment operator must be a variable, or

a compile time error occurs. This operand may be a named variable, such as a

local variable or a field of the current object or class, or it may be a computed vari 

able, as can result from a field access ( 15.10) or an array access ( 15.12). The

type of the assignment expression is the type of the variable.

At run time, the result of the assignment expression is the value of the variable

after the assignment has occurred. The result of an assignment expression is not

itself a variable.

A variable that is declared

final

 cannot be assigned to, because when an

access of a

final

 variable is used as an expression, the result is a value, not a

variable, and so it cannot be used as the operand of an assignment operator.

15.25.1   Simple Assignment Operator

=

A compile time error occurs if the type of the right hand operand cannot be con 

verted to the type of the variable by assignment conversion ( 5.2).

At run time, the expression is evaluated in one of two ways. If the left hand

operand expression is not an array access expression, then three steps are

required:

First, the left hand operand is evaluated to produce a variable. If this evalua 

tion completes abruptly, then the assignment expression completes abruptly

369