When looking at pseudocode (actually, on the Wikipedia article on A*), i came across the use of := to assign or initialize a variable. What does this mean? Is part of some kind of set notation? If it's something complicated, how would one go about implementing this in C++ or Java? Thanks.
:= indicates assignment of a variable. := is used when = is a test for equality (rather than the standard == seen in most modern programming languages), not an assignment. In Pascal, for instance, := is used for assignment, and = is used to test for equality. See the "Notation" section of the assignment article for a list of notations for assignment.