Introduction to C Programming Operators in C Part 1 Operators in C Part 2 Precedence and Associativity Of Operators in C If else Statements in C Switch Statement in C Loops in C While and Do-While loops in C Nested loops in C Loop Control Statements in C 1D Arrays in C 2D Arrays in C Pattern Printing in 2D arrays Functions in C Pointers in C ASCII Encoding and Typecasting in C

Precedence and Associativity of Operators

When multiple operators are used in one expression such as ++,-- or + or *, etc we need to decide the order in which to evaluate different operators on the basis of priority in order to get the correct results. This is called precedence of operators.
Associativity means that when there are multiple operators of the same kind for e.g - a*b*c or a+b+c etc. then the direction in which to evaluate the expression - left to right or right to left.

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C operator Precedence and Associativity Table
Example

C Operator Precedence and Associativity Table

Operator	Associativity	Precedence
() [] -> .	Left to right	Highest
++ -- + - ! ~ (type) * & sizeof	Right to left
* / %	Left to right
+ -	Left to right
<< >>	Left to right
< <= > >=	Left to right
== !=	Left to right
&	Left to right
^	Left to right
\|	Left to right
&&	Left to right
\|\|	Left to right
?:	Right to left
= += -= *= /= %= <<= >>= &= ^= \|=	Right to left
,	Left to Right	Lowest

Example


#include<stdio.h>
void main()
{
    int a=19,b=10,c=40,d=20,e=2;

    // This expression will be evaluated as (a + (b * (c/d) ) ) based on precedence of operators.

    printf("Value of a+b*c/d = %d \n",a+b*c/d);

    // Brackets have the highest priority, this expression will be evaluated as 
    //(((++a) + ((b*c)/(d--)))+(--e) )

    printf("Value of (++a+(b*c)/d--)+--e = %d \n",(++a+(b*c)/d--)+--e);
}

Output

Value of a+b*c/d = 39 
Value of (++a+(b*c)/d--)+--e = 41