Section 2.6. Operators

2.6. Operators

Operators perform operations on one, two, or three operands and return a result. Operator types in Java include assignment, arithmetic, comparison, bitwise, increment/decrement, and class/object. Table 2-4 contains the Java operators listed in precedence order (those with the highest precedence at the top of the table), along with a brief description of the operators and their associativity (left to right or right to left).

Table 2-4. Java operators

Precedence	Operator	Description	Association
1	++,--	Postincrement, Postdecrement	R L
2	++,--	Preincrement, Predecrement	R L
	+,-	Unary plus, unary minus	R L
	~	Bitwise compliment	R L
	!	Boolean NOT	R L
3	new	Create object	R L
	(type)	Type cast	R L
4	*,/,%	Multiplication, division, remainder	L R
5	+,-	Addition, subtraction	L R
	+	String concatenation	L R
6	<<, >>, >>>	Left shift, right shift, unsigned right shift	L R
7	<, <=, >, >=	Less than, less than or equal to, greater than, greater than or equal to	L R
	instanceof	Type comparison	L R
8	==, !=	Value equality and inequality	L R
	==, !=	Reference equality and inequality	L R
9	&	Boolean AND	L R
	&	Bitwise AND	L R
10	^	Boolean XOR	L R
	^	Bitwise XOR	L R
11	|	Boolean OR	L R
	|	Bitwise OR	L R
12	&&	Conditional AND	L R
13	||	Conditional OR	L R
14	?:	Conditional Ternary Operator	L R
15	=,+=,-=, *=,/ =,%=,&=,^=, |=, <<=, >> =, >>>=	Assignment Operators	R L