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.
29
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answers
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Should addition assignment `a += b` be equivalent to addition then assignment `a = a + b` [closed]
I am looking for the pros and cons of a += b being an exact synonymous, or not, of a = a + b. The question also holds regarding <...
- 244
8
votes
6
answers
3k
views
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 ...
- 7,285
42
votes
6
answers
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views
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 ...
- 91
3
votes
4
answers
227
views
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 ...
- 2,459
12
votes
5
answers
857
views
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 ...
- 1,043
17
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Why does MATLAB have left division/solve?
In MATLAB (and Octave), the \ (or mldivide) and \. operators are provided with the exact ...
- 3,028
17
votes
9
answers
3k
views
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 ...
- 2,594
9
votes
4
answers
379
views
What are the advantages of keyword based syntax versus punctuation based syntax?
Some languages such as Lua and Assembly Basic use keywords for syntax. This includes spelling out words such as do and end in ...
- 7,285
2
votes
3
answers
182
views
Pros and cons of generalized `nil`-coalescing operators
Many languages extend their "indexing" operator . to a nil-coalescing variant ?. to deal with indexing chains such as <...
- 288
5
votes
6
answers
309
views
Ways to have operators for both normal and floor division
I want to have an operator for true division (like / in python) giving a float as the result and floor division (like // in ...
- 225
9
votes
6
answers
2k
views
What syntax could be used to implement both an exponentiation operator and XOR?
C does not have an exponentiation operator, so that freestanding implementations that lack the math libraries could lack exponentiation as a whole, and still be permissible by the C standard. As a ...
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16
votes
5
answers
1k
views
What are the downsides of supporting chained comparison operators?
Some languages, such as Python, support chaining comparison operators, such that x < y < z is equivalent to ...
- 4,098
5
votes
9
answers
584
views
What are pros/cons of ternary conditional operators?
There are some languages that support ternary operator. There are Python, C, JavaScript, PHP.
In languages like C and JavaScript, the syntax is like this:
...
- 1,521
2
votes
3
answers
95
views
Pre-increment and post-increment and augmented assignment but no post-augmented assignment?
In C-style languages we have:
int x = 10;
x++; // x is now 11 but the expression returns 10
...
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11
votes
2
answers
381
views
What are some caveats to be careful about when implementing the `?:` (ternary conditional) operator?
Thus far, I see two things that can go wrong when implementing the ?: (ternary conditional) operator:
PHP famously incorrectly implemented the ...
- 928
6
votes
2
answers
272
views
If size could be determined at compile time then why could size not be determined at preprocess time?
In C the sizeof() operator cannot be resolved in preprocessor conditions. If other operators such as + or ...
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8
votes
4
answers
340
views
What are the potential problems with assignment operators returning the new-value operand and how can they be avoided or mitigated?
Inline assignment is when the assignment operator can return the value of the new-value (right-hand) operand. For example:
...
- 7,285
8
votes
3
answers
303
views
Unambiguous syntax for a ternary comparison operator
How could an operator to test if a number is within a lower and upper bound? SQL seems to have this as in 10 <= x <= 20. However, if this were to be ...
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14
votes
7
answers
595
views
Ternary operators other than ?: [closed]
In many programming languages, there is a ternary operator such as X ? Y : Z or Y if X else Z. This can be used as an ...
- 1,553
12
votes
6
answers
368
views
What are the disadvantages of this far-fetched idea: All integers can be treated as boolean arrays?
I do not know of any languages that support this idea but I just thought that since numbers are just bits, why should we not be able to access those bits directly? In most languages such as C or C++, ...
- 7,285
8
votes
1
answer
159
views
How to distinguish custom operators from each other?
How might one go about building a parser that can distinguish custom operators in prefix, infix or postfix positions.
For example:
...
- 157
5
votes
2
answers
276
views
What are the pros and cons of each type of operator notation (prefix/postfix/infix)?
In Prefix notation, the operator comes before the operands (e.g., +a b).
In Postfix notation, the operator comes after the operands (e.g., ...
- 1,474
1
vote
3
answers
483
views
Why is the Elvis operator not more common?
From Wikipedia:
In certain computer programming languages, the Elvis operator, often written ?:, is a
binary operator that returns its first operand if that ...
- 960
13
votes
5
answers
445
views
Distinguishing modulo (Euclidean division) from remainder
The % operator in most programming language provide a remainder from integer division. When both operands are positive all works as expected. But when the number is ...
- 7,285
7
votes
5
answers
420
views
Why are expressions in languages so prone to integer overflow?
I've always wondered. Why do major languages let their addition and multiplication operators be so prone to integer overflow? My programming language would have separate operators to handle overflow. ...
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votes
6
answers
510
views
How can ambiguity with unary and binary operators be resolved?
Most languages use +/- for addition and subtraction, in addition to using +/...
- 4,098
6
votes
6
answers
422
views
Advantages/disavantages of including the comma operator?
In many C style languages the , binary operator takes 2 expressions and simply returns the second one:
...
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16
votes
15
answers
1k
views
What are the syntax options for implementing a ternary "if" operator?
The ternary "if" operator is a syntactic construct for returning one of two values based upon a boolean condition. In most C-family languages its syntax resembles ...
- 2,451
14
votes
11
answers
793
views
What alternatives are there for C++ operator overloading syntax?
I noticed C++ has operator overloading syntax with just the operator names:
T& operator +(T& lhs, T& rhs) {
return /* ... */;
}
However, there are ...
- 7,285