Can Someone Tell Me What This Means?

I'm confused what ~= mean for example:

game.Players.PlayerAdded:connect(function(player)
    player.CharacterAdded:connect(function(character)
    if character ~= nil then
            character.Head.Transparency = 1
            character:FindFistChild("Right Arm").Tranparency = 1
        end
    end)
end)

~= means "not equal to". Like 3 ~= 5 or true ~= false. if character ~= nil then is basically saying "if the character exists then". Hope this helped!