SAMS Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes SECOND EDITION

Nesting Parentheses

With complex expressions, you might need to nest parentheses (to put a subexpression inside another subexpression). For example:

4*(3+(6/2))

This complicated expression should be read from the inside out. First, divide 6 by 2. Then add 3 to that result. Then multiply the updated result by 4.

Because C++ doesn't require an expression to be written on a single line, you can make this more understandable by using the parentheses as if they were braces:

4*
(
   3+
   (6/2)
)

This makes it easier to be sure that every opening parenthesis has a closing parenthesis (thus avoiding a common programming mistake).

Expressions in cout

iostream can display the result of a complex expression just as easily as it can display a simple string ...