## 19.3.2 Assignment nodes

There is a collection of nodes used to represent assignments. Each assignment statement in the source code becomes a single `Assign` node in the AST. The `nodes` attribute is a list that contains a node for each assignment target. This is necessary because assignment can be chained, e.g. `a = b = 2`. Each `Node` in the list will be one of the following classes: `AssAttr`, `AssList`, `AssName`, or `AssTuple`.

Each target assignment node will describe the kind of object being assigned to: `AssName` for a simple name, e.g. `a = 1`. `AssAttr` for an attribute assigned, e.g. `a.x = 1`. `AssList` and `AssTuple` for list and tuple expansion respectively, e.g. `a, b, c = a_tuple`.

The target assignment nodes also have a `flags` attribute that indicates whether the node is being used for assignment or in a delete statement. The `AssName` is also used to represent a delete statement, e.g. `del x`.

When an expression contains several attribute references, an assignment or delete statement will contain only one `AssAttr` node - for the final attribute reference. The other attribute references will be represented as `Getattr` nodes in the `expr` attribute of the `AssAttr` instance.