Java Tutorial #2 – Operators in Java

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Assignment Operator
• 2. Arithmetic Operators
• 3. Compound Operators
• 4. Increment & Decrement Operators
• 5. Relational Operators
• 6. Logical Operators

Introduction

Operators are an essential part of any programming language. In-fact it is not possible not to write a decent piece of code without making use of ‘Operators’. Java operators can be categorized mainly into arithmetic, relational and logical operators. In addition, there is a special assignment operator that is used to assign values to variables. Each of these is covered in a separate section below.

1. Assignment Operator

The “=” sign is known as the assignment operator.  It assigns whatever is to its right to the variable on its left. The variable type must be compatible with the value being assigned. The following code demonstrates this:

int a = 10; //assigns the value 10 to the variable a

int b = 5+8; // assigns the value 13 to the variable b

2. Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators are those that are used in ordinary mathematics, that is addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These can only be applied to numerical operands. The Arithmetic operators can be further broken down into Basic Operators, Compound Assignment Operators and Increment/Decrement operators.

3. Compound Assignment

Java provides special operators which can be used to combine an operation with an assignment.  These are known as compound assignment operators. The compound operators are just shortcut operators which can be used when you want to change the value of a particular variable. Java supports compound assignment operators for each of the arithmetic operators as listed below:

4. Increment & Decrement Operators

Java provides two additional operators known as increment and decrement operators. These basically increment or decrement the variable on which they are invoked.

Both operators come in two variants, prefix and postfix. In the prefix form the operator precedes the operand and the operation is performed before the assignment. In the postfix form, the operator succeeds the operand and the operation is performed after the assignment. The following code demonstrates this:

int i = 5;
//postfix form, will print i, then increment, so will output 5
System.out.println(i++); 
int j = 10;
//prefix form, will decrement j first then print it, so will output 9
System.out.println(--j);

5. Relational Operators

Relational operators are used to determine the relationship between operands. They return a boolean value. Java has the following relationship operators:

6. Logical Operators

Logical operators operate on boolean values and are used to combine relational comparisons. Java has the following logical operators:

Logical operators can be used to combine relational comparisons as follows:

int a=30, b=20, c=10;
if(a > b && b > c){
// do something
}