perlop - Perl operators and precedence
-=head1 SYNOPSIS
+=head1 DESCRIPTION
+
+=head2 Operator Precedence and Associativity
+
+Operator precedence and associativity work in Perl more or less like
+they do in mathematics.
+
+I<Operator precedence> means some operators are evaluated before
+others. For example, in C<2 + 4 * 5>, the multiplication has higher
+precedence so C<4 * 5> is evaluated first yielding C<2 + 20 ==
+22> and not C<6 * 5 == 30>.
+
+I<Operator associativity> defines what happens if a sequence of the
+same operators is used one after another: whether the evaluator will
+evaluate the left operations first or the right. For example, in C<8
+- 4 - 2>, subtraction is left associative so Perl evaluates the
+expression left to right. C<8 - 4> is evaluated first making the
+expression C<4 - 2 == 2> and not C<8 - 2 == 6>.
Perl operators have the following associativity and precedence,
listed from highest precedence to lowest. Operators borrowed from
Many operators can be overloaded for objects. See L<overload>.
-=head1 DESCRIPTION
-
=head2 Terms and List Operators (Leftward)
A TERM has the highest precedence in Perl. They include variables,
print ($foo & 255) + 1, "\n";
-probably doesn't do what you expect at first glance. See
-L<Named Unary Operators> for more discussion of this.
+probably doesn't do what you expect at first glance. The parentheses
+enclose the argument list for C<print> which is evaluated (printing
+the result of C<$foo & 255>). Then one is added to the return value
+of C<print> (usually 1). The result is something like this:
+
+ 1 + 1, "\n"; # Obviously not what you meant.
+
+To do what you meant properly, you must write:
+
+ print(($foo & 255) + 1, "\n");
+
+See L<Named Unary Operators> for more discussion of this.
Also parsed as terms are the C<do {}> and C<eval {}> constructs, as
well as subroutine and method calls, and the anonymous
=head2 Auto-increment and Auto-decrement
-"++" and "--" work as in C. That is, if placed before a variable, they
-increment or decrement the variable before returning the value, and if
-placed after, increment or decrement the variable after returning the value.
+"++" and "--" work as in C. That is, if placed before a variable,
+they increment or decrement the variable by one before returning the
+value, and if placed after, increment or decrement after returning the
+value.
+
+ $i = 0; $j = 0;
+ print $i++; # prints 0
+ print ++$j; # prints 1
The auto-increment operator has a little extra builtin magic to it. If
you increment a variable that is numeric, or that has ever been used in
L<Bitwise String Operators>.) Note that the width of the result is
platform-dependent: ~0 is 32 bits wide on a 32-bit platform, but 64
bits wide on a 64-bit platform, so if you are expecting a certain bit
-width, remember use the & operator to mask off the excess bits.
+width, remember to use the & operator to mask off the excess bits.
Unary "+" has no effect whatsoever, even on strings. It is useful
syntactically for separating a function name from a parenthesized expression
is similar to C<defined($a) || $b> (except that it returns the value of C<$a>
rather than the value of C<defined($a)>) and is exactly equivalent to
C<defined($a) ? $a : $b>. This is very useful for providing default values
-for variables. If you actually want to test if at least one of C<$a> and C<$b> is
-defined, use C<defined($a // $b)>.
+for variables. If you actually want to test if at least one of C<$a> and
+C<$b> is defined, use C<defined($a // $b)>.
-The C<||>, C<//> and C<&&> operators differ from C's in that, rather than returning
-0 or 1, they return the last value evaluated. Thus, a reasonably portable
-way to find out the home directory might be:
+The C<||>, C<//> and C<&&> operators return the last value evaluated
+(unlike C's C<||> and C<&&>, which return 0 or 1). Thus, a reasonably
+portable way to find out the home directory might be:
$home = $ENV{'HOME'} // $ENV{'LOGDIR'} //
(getpwuid($<))[7] // die "You're homeless!\n";
In list context, it's just the list argument separator, and inserts
both its arguments into the list.
-The => digraph is mostly just a synonym for the comma operator. It's useful for
-documenting arguments that come in pairs. As of release 5.001, it also forces
-any word to the left of it to be interpreted as a string.
+The C<< => >> operator is a synonym for the comma, but forces any word
+to its left to be interpreted as a string (as of 5.001). It is helpful
+in documenting the correspondence between keys and values in hashes,
+and other paired elements in lists.
=head2 List Operators (Rightward)
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