What is an accumulator? What does it mean to initialize and update an accumulator in a program?

What will be an ideal response?

An accumulator is a numeric variable used for accumulating (adding together) something, such as a total dollar amount. You initialize an accumulator to assign a beginning value to it, and an accumulator is usually initialized to the number 0. You update an accumulator by adding a number to or subtracting a number from the value stored in the accumulator. An accumulator is usually updated by an amount that varies. It is updated each time the loop instructions are processed.