C Programming For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Appendix G

Order of Precedence

• The order of precedence goes as shown in Table G-1 and is overridden by using parentheses. C always executes the portion of an equation in parentheses before anything else.
• Incremented or decremented variables as lvalues (assigned to another value) operate left-to-right. So, ++var increments before its value is assigned; var++ increments its value after it's assigned. (See Table G-2.)
• Associativity for the assignment operators moves right-to-left. For example, the operation on the right side of += happens first.
• The order of precedence may also be referred to as the order of operations.

TABLE G-1 Standard Operator Precedence

Operator(s)	Category	Description
() [] -> . (period)	Expression	Function arguments, arrays, pointer members
! ~ -- + * & ++ --	Unary	Logical not, one’s complement, positive, negative, pointer, address-of, increment, decrement; operations right-to-left
* / %	Math	Multiplication, division, modulo
+ –	Math	Addition, subtraction
<< >>	Binary	Shift left, shift right
< > <= >=	Comparison	Less than, greater than, less than or equal to, greater than or equal to
== !=	Comparison	Is equal to, not equal to
&	Binary	And
^	Binary	Exclusive or (XOR)
|	Binary	Or
&&	Logical	And
||	Logical	Or
?:	Comparison	Ternary operator, associativity goes right-to-left
=	Assignment	Variable assignment operator, including += and *= and all assignment operators
, (comma) ...