They're the same. The first one is just the code - how the variable is assigned. It's how it looks in the editor window. If you execute that code, it will show up like you have in the second section. That's just how it looks in the command window and will echo there if you don't put a semicolon on the end of the line. That is not something that you'd actually execute as part of your script - it's just the displayed output of an assignment command.
Beyond that, I'm not really sure what you want to do. You obviously already have p because you displayed it in the command window, so just start using it. Why do you think you need to do anything other than use "p"???
