Similar to some other programming languages, R has multiple assignment operators, which we can use interchangeably, at least for now.

In R, specific assignment operators such as <- and -> are available alongside the more universally recognized = operator. At this point, the difference between these operators is not significant, but we will revisit them later when we discuss functions.

Using <- for assignment is similar to using =, with the variable name positioned to the left and the value to the right. Conversely, the -> operator reverses this order. For instance, to assign the value 2020 to the variable year, there are three syntactical options:

year = 2020
year <- 2020
2020 -> year

Even though the last method of assignment is syntactically correct, it is generally discouraged due to its potential to reduce code readability.