Operators in 'C'

'C' supports a rich set of operators. We have already used in previous posts. Examples of operators are =, +, -, *, & and <. An operator is a symbol that tells the computer to perform certain mathematical or logical manipulations. Operators are used in programs to manipulate data and variables.


'C' operators can be classified into following categories:

• Arithmetic Operators
• Relational Operators
• Logical Operators
• Assignment Operators
• Increment and decrement Operators
• Conditional Operators
• Bitwise Operators
• Special Operators

• Arithmetic Operators

All the basic arithmetic operations can be carried out in C. All the operators have almost the same meaning as in other languages. Both unary and binary operations are available in C language. Unary operations operate on a singe operand, therefore the number 5 when operated by unary – will have the value –5.

Arithmetic Operators

Operator	Meaning
+	Addition or Unary Plus
–	Subtraction or Unary Minus
*	Multiplication
/	Division
%	Modulus Operator

Examples of arithmetic operators are

x + y
x - y
-x + y
a * b + c
-a * b

etc.,

here a, b, c, x, y are known as operands. The modulus operator is a special operator in C language which evaluates the remainder of the operands after division.

• Integer Arithmetic

When an arithmetic operation is performed on two whole numbers or integers than such an operation is called as integer arithmetic. It always gives an integer as the result. Let x = 27 and y = 5 be 2 integer numbers. Then the integer operation leads to the following results.

x + y = 32
x – y = 22
x * y = 115
x % y = 2
x / y = 5

In integer division the fractional part is truncated.

Floating point arithmetic

When an arithmetic operation is preformed on two real numbers or fraction numbers such an operation is called floating point arithmetic. The floating point results can be truncated according to the properties requirement. The remainder operator is not applicable for floating point arithmetic operands.

Let x = 14.0 and y = 4.0 then

x + y = 18.0
x – y = 10.0
x * y = 56.0
x / y = 3.50

Mixed mode arithmetic

When one of the operand is real and other is an integer and if the arithmetic operation is carried out on these 2 operands then it is called as mixed mode arithmetic. If any one operand is of real type then the result will always be real thus 15/10.0 = 1.5

• Relational Operators 

Often it is required to compare the relationship between operands and bring out a decision and program accordingly. This is when the relational operator come into picture. C supports the following relational operators.

Operator	Meaning
<	is less than
<=	is less than or equal to
>	is greater than
>=	is greater than or equal to
==	is equal to
!=	is not equal to

It is required to compare the marks of 2 students, salary of 2 persons, we can compare them using relational operators. A simple relational expression contains only one relational operator and takes the following form. exp1 relational operator exp2 Where exp1 and exp2 are expressions, which may be simple constants, variables or combination of them. Given below is a list of examples of relational expressions and evaluated values. 6.5 <= 25 TRUE -65 > 0 FALSE 10 < 7 + 5 TRUE Relational expressions are used in decision making statements of C language such as if, while and for statements to decide the course of action of a running program. 

•  Logical Operators

C has the following logical operators, they compare or evaluate logical and relational expressions.

Operator	Meaning
&&	Logical AND
||	Logical OR
!	Logical NOT

Logical AND (&&)

This operator is used to evaluate 2 conditions or expressions with relational operators simultaneously. If both the expressions to the left and to the right of the logical operator is true then the whole compound expression is true. Example a > b && x = = 10 The expression to the left is a > b and that on the right is x == 10 the whole expression is true only if both expressions are true i.e., if a is greater than b and x is equal to 10.

Logical OR (||)

The logical OR is used to combine 2 expressions or the condition evaluates to true if any one of the 2 expressions is true. Example a < m || a < n The expression evaluates to true if any one of them is true or if both of them are true. It evaluates to true if a is less than either m or n and when a is less than both m and n.

Logical NOT (!)

The logical not operator takes single expression and evaluates to true if the expression is false and evaluates to false if the expression is true. In other words it just reverses the value of the expression. For example ! (x >= y) the NOT expression evaluates to true only if the value of x is neither greater than or equal to

• Assignment Operator

The Assignment Operator evaluates an expression on the right of the expression and substitutes it to the value or variable on the left of the expression. Example x = a + b Here the value of a + b is evaluated and substituted to the variable x. In addition, C has a set of shorthand assignment operators of the form. var oper = exp; Here var is a variable, exp is an expression and oper is a C binary arithmetic operator. The operator oper = is known as shorthand assignment operator Example x + = 1 is same as x = x + 1 The commonly used shorthand assignment operators are as follows Shorthand assignment operators

Statement with simple assignment operator	Statement with shorthand operator
a = a + 1	a += 1
a = a – 1	a -= 1
a = a * (n+1)	a *= (n+1)
a = a / (n+1)	a /= (n+1)
a = a % b	a %=

• Increment Decrement Operators 

'C' has two very special operators not generally found in other languages. These are the increment and decrement operators:  

++ and -- 

The Operator ++ adds 1 to the operand while -- subtracts 1. Both are unary operators and take the following form:

++m or m++;

--m or m--;

++m is equivalent to m = m+1;

--m is equivalent to m = m-1;

Suppose if we rewrite the above statement as

m = 5;
y = m++; (post fix)

Then the value of y will be 5 and that of m will be 6. A prefix operator first adds 1 to the operand and then the result is assigned to the variable on the left. On the other hand, a postfix operator first assigns the value to the variable on the left and then increments the operand. 

• 
  

  Conditional or Ternary Operator

The conditional operator consists of 2 symbols the question mark (?) and the colon (:)
The syntax for a ternary operator is as follows

exp1 ? exp2 : exp3

The ternary operator works as follows

exp1 is evaluated first. If the expression is true then exp2 is evaluated & its value becomes the value of the expression. If exp1 is false, exp3 is evaluated and its value becomes the value of the expression. Note that only one of the expression is evaluated.

For example

a = 10;
b = 15;
x = (a > b) ? a : b

Here x will be assigned to the value of b. The condition follows that the expression is false therefore b is assigned to x. 

• Bitwise Operators

C has a distinction of supporting special operators known as bitwise operators for manipulation data at bit level. A bitwise operator operates on each bit of data. Those operators are used for testing, complementing or shifting bits to the right on left. Bitwise operators may not be applied to a float or double.

Operator	Meaning
&	Bitwise AND
|	Bitwise OR
^	Bitwise Exclusive
<<	Shift left
>>	Shift right

• Special Operators

C supports some special operators of interest such as comma operator, size of operator, pointer operators (& and *) and member selection operators (. and ->). The size of and the comma operators are discussed here. The remaining operators are discussed in forth coming chapters.

• The Comma Operator

The comma operator can be used to link related expressions together. A comma-linked list of expressions are evaluated left to right and value of right most expression is the value of the combined expression.

For example the statement

value = (x = 10, y = 5, x + y);

First assigns 10 to x and 5 to y and finally assigns 15 to value. Since comma has the lowest precedence in operators the parenthesis is necessary. Some examples of commaoperator are

In for loops:

for (n=1, m=10, n <=m; n++,m++)

In while loops

While (c=getchar(), c != ‘10’)

Exchanging values

t = x, x = y, y = t; 

The size of Operator

The operator size of gives the size of the data type or variable in terms of bytes occupied in the memory. The operand may be a variable, a constant or a data type qualifier.

Example

m = sizeof (sum);
n = sizeof (long int);
k = sizeof (235L);

The size of operator is normally used to determine the lengths of arrays and structures when their sizes are not known to the programmer. It is also used to allocate memory space dynamically to variables during the execution of the program.

Example program that employs different kinds of operators. The results of their evaluation are also shown in comparision