compound assignment operators example

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Compound-Assignment Operators

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• M.A., Advanced Information Systems, University of Glasgow

Compound-assignment operators provide a shorter syntax for assigning the result of an arithmetic or bitwise operator. They perform the operation on the two operands before assigning the result to the first operand.

Compound-Assignment Operators in Java

Java supports 11 compound-assignment operators:

Example Usage

To assign the result of an addition operation to a variable using the standard syntax:

But use a compound-assignment operator to effect the same outcome with the simpler syntax:

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Compound Assignment Operators in C++

The compound assignment operators are specified in the form e1 op= e2, where e1 is a modifiable l-value not of const type and e2 is one of the following −

• An arithmetic type
• A pointer, if op is + or –

The e1 op= e2 form behaves as e1 = e1 op e2, but e1 is evaluated only once.

The following are the compound assignment operators in C++ −

Let's have a look at an example using some of these operators −

This will give the output −

Note that Compound assignment to an enumerated type generates an error message. If the left operand is of a pointer type, the right operand must be of a pointer type or it must be a constant expression that evaluates to 0. If the left operand is of an integral type, the right operand must not be of a pointer type.

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C Compound Assignment

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The compound-assignment operators combine the simple-assignment operator with another binary operator. Compound-assignment operators perform the operation specified by the additional operator, then assign the result to the left operand. For example, a compound-assignment expression such as

expression1 += expression2

can be understood as

expression1 = expression1 + expression2

However, the compound-assignment expression is not equivalent to the expanded version because the compound-assignment expression evaluates expression1 only once, while the expanded version evaluates expression1 twice: in the addition operation and in the assignment operation.

The operands of a compound-assignment operator must be of integral or floating type. Each compound-assignment operator performs the conversions that the corresponding binary operator performs and restricts the types of its operands accordingly. The addition-assignment ( += ) and subtraction-assignment ( -= ) operators can also have a left operand of pointer type, in which case the right-hand operand must be of integral type. The result of a compound-assignment operation has the value and type of the left operand.

In this example, a bitwise-inclusive-AND operation is performed on n and MASK , and the result is assigned to n . The manifest constant MASK is defined with a #define preprocessor directive.

C Assignment Operators

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