assignmentsexpressionsand prints now that we've had quick introduction to python statement syntaxthis begins our in-depth tour of specific python statements we'll begin with the basicsassignment statementsexpression statementsand print operations we've already seen all of these in actionbut here we'll fill in important details we've skipped so far although they're relatively simpleas you'll seethere are optional variations for each of these statement types that will come in handy once you begin writing realistic python programs assignment statements we've been using the python assignment statement for while to assign objects to names in its basic formyou write the target of an assignment on the left of an equals signand the object to be assigned on the right the target on the left may be name or object componentand the object on the right can be an arbitrary expression that computes an object for the most partassignments are straightforwardbut here are few properties to keep in mindassignments create object references as discussed in python assignments store references to objects in names or data structure components they always create references to objects instead of copying the objects because of thatpython variables are more like pointers than data storage areas names are created when first assigned python creates variable name the first time you assign it value ( an object reference)so there' no need to predeclare names ahead of time some (but not alldata structure slots are created when assignedtoo ( dictionary entriessome object attributesonce assigneda name is replaced with the value it references whenever it appears in an expression names must be assigned before being referenced it' an error to use name to which you haven' yet assigned value python raises an exception if you tryrather than returning some sort of ambiguous default value this turns out to be crucial in python because names are not predeclared--if python provided default