Precedence

As you go down the list of operators, the operators bind more tightly to their arguments. Binding tells the compiler which expressions to evaluate first in a complex statement. Tightly bound operators are evaluated before more loosely bound operators. Practically this means the expressions are evaluated as follows:

A + B * C is regarded as A + (B * C)

A eq B or C eq D is regarded as (A eq B)or(C eq D)

Expressions bind tighter toward the left, e.g.:

A / B * C is considered as (A / B) * C

You may use parentheses to force other binding, e.g.:

(A + B) * C

A / (B * C)

If you have programmed in C, Pascal, or Fortran, this should look familiar.