Final answer:
The assignment operator is the equal sign (=), which is used in programming to assign a value to a variable.
Step-by-step explanation:
The symbol that is used as the assignment operator is =. In programming, the assignment operator is used to assign a value to a variable. For example, if we have a variable x, and we want to assign the value 10 to it, we would write x = 10. This is not to be confused with the equality operator, which in many programming languages is == and is used to compare two values.
It's important to note that different programming languages might have different symbols or additional operators for assignment such as += or :=, but the single equal sign = is universally recognized as the basic assignment operator.