Assignment operator

[ichabod801]

I'm not sure what you mean by arithmetic operator. The assignment operator (=) is often confused with the comparison operator (==), however.

>>> breakfast = 'spam'   # assigns a value to the breakfast variable
>>> breakfast            # show that value
'spam'
>>> breakfast == 'eggs'  # compares the breakfast variable to another value.
False
>>> breakfast == 'spam'
True

The assignment operator is for storing values in variables. The comparison operator is usually used in conditionals (if/elif) and while loops.