C++: initialize vs assignment?

Question

I'm reading Stroustrups C++ 4th Ed. Page 153 and have questions about initialization vs assignment. It's my understanding that initialization is occurs in the constructor and assignment in operator= overloaded function. Is this correct?

Also, I don't recall seeing the brackets i.e. int count {1} in his 1998 3rd Ed. book. Should I be defining variables like counters using int count {1} or int count = 1? Seems like an awkward difference from C if using the brackets.

Thanks for your guidance

void f() {
   int count {1}; // initialize count to 1
   const char∗ name {"Bjarne"}; // name is a    variable that points to a constant (§7.5) 
   count = 2; // assign 2 to count
   name = "Marian";
}

Answer 1

The curly braces is part of uniform initialization which was added with the C++11 standard.

Using

int value {1};

is equivalent to

int value = 1;

There's some differences between using curly braces and "assignment" syntax for initialization of variables, but in this simple case they're equal.

Answer 2

initialize means you write the variable for the first time and give it an initial value like int x=5; but assignment means that you already had a variable and you change its value like when you come later and set x=10; now you assignment number 10 at variable x