The assignment operator is a fundamental symbol in programming, commonly represented by the equal sign (=). It is used to assign a value to a variable. For example, in the statement x = 5, the value 5 is assigned to the variable x. This operator allows programmers to store data for later use in their code. In addition to the basic assignment, there are also compound assignment operators, such as += and -=. These operators combine the assignment with another operation. For instance, x += 2 adds 2 to the current value of x and then assigns the result back to x. This makes coding more efficient and concise.