Questions tagged [operators]
For questions about operators in programming languages. Operators are built-in tokens that perform specific operations on their operands distinct from functions.
37 questions
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What is the origin of ++ and --?
In a lot of languages (eg Java, C++, etc), you can use ++ and -- as increment/decrement operators.
What was the origin of ...
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34
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6
answers
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Why do most languages have a complete operator precedence?
I actually drafted most of this question before the relevant stack overflow question but it's still relevant.
C has a famously confusing operator precedence order. It is divided into 15 levels and ...
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2
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Decimal point as a binary operation [closed]
I wonder if anyone has tried implementing the decimal point as a binary operation a.b = $f(a, b) = a+b/10^{1+floor(log_{10} b)}$
That would simplify the PL design, and add new possibilities. For ...
13
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2
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What optimizations are possible with unsequenced operators?
In C, most binary operators do not specify which operand will be evaluated first:
...
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21
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6
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Why is array access not an infix operator?
The typical syntax for accessing an array (or list, map and similar data structures) at a specific index is a[i]. I believe C first introduced it as syntax sugar, ...
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Can two infix operators have the same priority, but different associativity? If so, how would it be implemented in the parser?
I am interested, is it possible that, in some programming language, two infix operators have the same priority, but different associativity? If so, how is that implemented in the parser?
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How do you correctly compile the chained comparison operators like ones that exist in Python (`a < b < c`), if `b` might have side-effects?
The most obvious way of supporting chained comparisons operators, such as a < b < c, is to rewrite it as ...
- 2,337
2
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1
answer
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How is the VHDL operator `<=`, which can be both right-associative (signal assignment) and left-associative (less-than-or-equal), parsed?
One of the most confusing things to me about VHDL is that the <= operator can mean both "less than or equal to" and it can be a signal assignment ...
- 2,337
10
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What should be the precedence of the bitwise operators relative to each others?
In C, the relative precedence of bitwise operators is as follows, from high to low precedence:
...
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6
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Why do relational comparison operators never short-circuit?
I just thought about the possibility for the less-than and-greater than operators to short-circuit. That is, they can skip evaluating their second operand if the value of the second operand logically ...
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47
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6
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Why do programming languages use the asterisk * for multiplication?
Having had very little math(s) education I'm trying to bring myself up to speed for university, which currently involves teaching myself the times tables, where X ...
- 141
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Common postfix representations of pointer/reference operations
In some C-based languages (including C/C++ themselves and Rust), taking pointers/references and dereferencing is done with prefix operators & and ...
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13
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Prior art on pipelines of function calls
Say I have a loop that looks like this:
for i in range(1, 10) {
print(i)
}
Now I want to take the same sequence in reverse, and filter out even numbers. I might ...
- 1,175
19
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3
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Why does MATLAB have left division/solve?
In MATLAB (and Octave), the \ (or mldivide) and \. operators are provided with the exact ...
- 3,317
18
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Why add an increment/decrement operator when compound assignments exist?
Many languages have compound assignment statements, for example +=. However, for the common task of adding or subtracting 1 from a variable some languages (mostly ...
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