Programming Perl, 4th Edition

Some Binary Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators do what you would expect from learning them in school. They perform some sort of mathematical function on numbers; see Table 1-2.

Table 1-2. Mathematical operators

Example	Name	Result
$a + $b	Addition	Sum of $a and $b
$a * $b	Multiplication	Product of $a and $b
$a % $b	Modulus	Remainder of $a divided by $b
$a ** $b	Exponentiation	$a to the power of $b

Yes, we left out subtraction and division—we suspect you can figure out how they should work. Try them and see if you’re right. (Or cheat and look in Chapter 3.) Arithmetic operators are evaluated in the order your math teacher taught you (exponentiation before multiplication; multiplication before addition). You can always use parentheses to make it come out differently.