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Subsection 2.3.6 Operator Precedence

The experiment that we’ve just done tells us that we’ve agreed to define an order in which the various arithmetic operations will be performed.

We call this order operator precedence. Higher precedence operators are done before lower precedence ones. The standard arithmetic operators are often arranged in the following order (although there is some disagreement about whether unary minus or exponentiation is done first):

Highest unary minus Done first
exponentiation
multiplication, division
Lowest addition, subtraction Done last