Java Operators

Aside from Java commands, Java operators are one of the most important tools when using the pro­gram­ming language. With a well-struc­tured overview, you will always have all the important Java operators to hand when you need them.

A Java operator can be used to perform op­er­a­tions on a set of values. There are a number of different Java operators, which are divided into unary, binary and ternary operators. Unary means that the Java operator has one digit, binary describes a two-digit operator, and the ternary con­di­tion­al operator has three digits.

An example of a unary Java operator is negation, which is expressed by ‘!example’. Sub­trac­tion is an example of a binary Java operator because it requires two operands (a - b). The only ternary Java operator is the con­di­tion­al operator, which works according to the if-then-else method:

In the following we will introduce you to the different Java operators.

The rules of arith­met­ic Java operators include the basic math­em­at­ic­al op­er­a­tions of addition, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­plic­a­tion and division.

In­cre­ment­ing or decre­ment­ing is required regularly in pro­gram­ming. For this purpose there are Java operators for in­cre­ment­ing (counting up) and decre­ment­ing (counting down).

When in­cre­ment­ing and decre­ment­ing, a dis­tinc­tion is made between post-increment and post-decrement and pre-increment and pre-decrement. While the math­em­at­ic­al char­ac­ters are placed after the variable in the first variant, they are listed first in the other variant. For example: ‘a++’ compared to ‘++a’. This makes a dif­fer­ence for the different steps. Here is the com­par­is­on between the two ap­proaches:

• a++: Post-increment causes the value of ‘a’ to be used first and ‘a’ to be in­cre­men­ted by ‘1’ only af­ter­wards.
• ++a: Pre-increment causes the value of ‘a’ to be increased by ‘1’ first and only used af­ter­wards.

Com­par­is­ons can also be made with the help of Java operators. For this purpose, two operands are compared with each other and the result is output as a Boolean value.

In addition to the Java operators listed above, there are other variants that are based on the Boolean principle. These include the following Java operators:

Bitwise Java operators are used to ma­nip­u­late in­di­vidu­al bits of numbers. The function is similar to the other Boolean operators. However, with the bitwise operators, each bit of the first operand is compared with the cor­res­pond­ing bit of the second operand.

As­sign­ment operators are an important tool for assigning values to variables. In each case, an ex­pres­sion is evaluated and applied to the front variable. The simplest variant is a = b, where the value of b is assigned to a. The as­sign­ment operators often con­trib­ute to shorter lines and can be combined with arith­met­ic, logical and bitwise Java operators.