Operator precedence and Associativity

 Operator precedence and Associativity

Each operator in C has a precedence associated with it. The precedence is used to determine how an expression involving more than one operator is evaluated. There are distinct levels of precedence and an operator may belong to one of these levels. The operators of higher precedence are evaluated first. The operators of same precedence are evaluated from right to left or from left to right depending on the level. This is known as “associativity” property of an operator. The below table shows the operator precedence and their associativity.

Operator	Description	Associativity
() [] . -> ++  --	Parentheses (function call) (see Note 1) Brackets (array subscript) Member selection via object name Member selection via pointer Postfix increment/decrement (see Note 2)	left-to-right
++  -- +  - !  ~ (type) * & sizeof	Prefix increment/decrement Unary plus/minus Logical negation/bitwise complement Cast (change type) Dereference Address Determine size in bytes	right-to-left
*  /  %	Multiplication/division/modulus	left-to-right
+  -	Addition/subtraction	left-to-right
<<  >>	Bitwise shift left, Bitwise shift right	left-to-right
<  <= >  >=	Relational less than/less than or equal to Relational greater than/greater than or equal to	left-to-right
==  !=	Relational is equal to/is not equal to	left-to-right
&	Bitwise AND	left-to-right
^	Bitwise exclusive OR	left-to-right
|	Bitwise inclusive OR	left-to-right
&&	Logical AND	left-to-right
||	Logical OR	left-to-right
?:	Ternary conditional	right-to-left
= +=  -= *=  /= %=  &= ^=  |= <<=  >>=	Assignment Addition/subtraction assignment Multiplication/division assignment Modulus/bitwise AND assignment Bitwise exclusive/inclusive OR assignment Bitwise shift left/right assignment	right-to-left
,	Comma (separate expressions)	left-to-right