Learning how Java’s operators cooperate

Java provides numerous operators for us to work with. By way of definition, if we have an expression 3 + 4, the + is the operator, whereas 3 and 4 are the operands. Since + has two operands, it is known as a binary operator.

Before we discuss the operators themselves, we must first discuss two important features relating to Java operators, namely order of precedence and associativity.

Order of precedence

Order of precedence specifies how operands are grouped with operators. This becomes important when you have shared operands in a complex expression. In the following code segment, we have an expression of 2 + 3 * 4, where * represents multiplication and + represents addition:

int a = 2 + 3 * 4;System.out.println(a);

In the preceding code, 3 is shared by both 2 and 4. So, the question arises, do we group 3 with 2, where the expression is (2 + 3) * 4, giving us 20; or do we group 3 with 4, where the expression is 2 + (3 *...