What does "assigns" do in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I am currently attempt to learn Ruby on Rails, and the testing framework RSpec. What does assigns do in this RSpec test?

 describe "GET index" do
    it "assigns all mymodel as @mymodel" do
      mymodel = Factory(:mymodel)
      get :index
      assigns(:mymodels).should eq([mymodel])
    end
  end

Answer 1

assigns simply checks the value of the instance variables you set in your controller.

Here it checks @mymodels.