C# Essentials

Expressions and Operators

An expression is a sequence of operators and operands that specifies a computation. C# has unary operators, binary operators, and one ternary operator. Complex expressions can be built because an operand may itself be an expression, such as the operand (1 + 2) in the following example:

((1 + 2) / 3)

Operator Precedence

When an expression contains multiple operators, the precedence of the operators controls the order in which the individual operators are evaluated. When the operators are of the same precedence, their associativity determines their order of evaluation. Binary operators (except for assignment operators) are left-associative and are evaluated from left to right. The assignment operators, unary operators, and the conditional operator are right-associative , evaluated from right to left.

For example:

1 + 2 + 3 * 4

is evaluated as:

((1 + 2) +(3 * 4))

because * has a higher precedence than +, and + is a left-associative binary operator. You can insert brackets to change the default order of evaluation. C# also overloads operators, which means the same operator symbols can have different meanings in different contexts (e.g., primary, unary, etc.) or different meanings for different types.

Table 2.2 lists C#’s operators in order of precedence. Operators in the same box have the same precedence, and operators in italic may be overloaded for custom types (see Section 2.9.8).

Table 2-2. Operator Precedence Table

Category	Operators
Primary	Grouping: