What is the priority operator in the C language?
In C language, priority operators are a set of operators used to determine the order of operations in an expression. They determine which operators will be executed first and which will be executed later based on their respective priorities.
The priority operators in the C language are arranged from highest to lowest as follows:
- parentheses
- Unary operators: ++, –, -, !, ~, *, &, sizeof, (type)
- Multiplication, division, and modulus: *, /, %.
- Addition and subtraction: +,-
- Shift operators: <<, >>
- Relational operators: >, <, >=, <=
- Equality operators: ==, !=
- Bitwise operators: &, ^, |
- Logical operators: AND, OR
- Conditional operator: ?:
- Assignment operators: =, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, <<=, >>=, &=, ^=, |=
- comma operator: ,
When an expression contains multiple operators, the higher priority operator will be executed first. If there are operators with the same priority, the order of execution will be determined by their associativity, which can be either left-to-right (left associative) or right-to-left (right associative).
It is important to note that if you are unsure about the precedence and associativity of operators, it is best to use parenthesis to clearly express the order of operations in an expression, in order to avoid producing incorrect results.
