JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD B.Tech I Year COMPUTER PROGRAMMING Previous Question Paper (October/November - 2020 - R15)

Operator precedence determines the order in which different operators are evaluated in an expression. When an expression contains multiple operators with different levels of precedence, the operator with the higher precedence is evaluated first. For example, in the expression 5 + 3 * 2, the multiplication operator (*) has higher precedence than the addition operator (+), so it is performed first, resulting in 11 rather than 16.

Operator associativity defines the order of evaluation for operators that have the same level of precedence. This can be either left-to-right or right-to-left. For instance, the subtraction operator (-) is left-associative, meaning 10 - 5 - 2 is evaluated as (10 - 5) - 2, resulting in 3. Conversely, the assignment operator (=) is right-associative, allowing for chained assignments like a = b = 5, where 5 is assigned to b, and then the result is assigned to a.

These rules are fundamental in eliminating ambiguity during expression evaluation by providing a strict, deterministic hierarchy for the compiler. Without these rules, a single expression could yield multiple valid results depending on the order of operations, making code execution unpredictable. By enforcing a standard order, precedence and associativity ensure that every expression is parsed and computed consistently across different compilers and platforms, allowing programmers to write complex mathematical and logical statements without requiring excessive parentheses to define the intended order of operations.