Order of Precedence in Statements
Consider the following statement:
x = 9 + 4 * 2
Depending on how you look at it, x could have two values--26 or 17. If you do
the addition of 9 + 4 first and then multiply by 2, you get 26. However, if you
multiply 4 * 2 first and then add 9, you get 17. The answer you get depends on
the order in which things happen. This order is referred to as order of
precedence or hierarchy of operators
In Visual Basic, the default order of precedence is that in a statement with multiplication/division operators and addition/subtraction operators, multiplication/division is performed first, before the addition/subtraction. In the preceding example, the default answer is 17. Other operators, such as comparison, logical, and string, are also affected by precedence.
When multiple types of operators are in a single statement, operator precedence controls what's performed first. Math operators are performed first, then comparison operators, and finally logical operators
| Operation | Operator Symbol |
| Exponentiation | ^ |
| Negation (unary) | - |
| Multiplication, division | *, / |
| Integer division | \ |
| Modulus | mod |
| Addition, subtraction | +, - |
| Concatenation (string) | & |
| Comparison operators | =, <>, <, >, <=, >+ |
| Logical operators | Not, And, Or, Xor, Eqv, Imp, Like, Is |
Parentheses are used to control specifically which parts of a statement are performed first. Without parentheses, operator precedence allows the program to determine what operation to do first. To ensure that arithmetic operations happen in the order you want them to, you can use parentheses to group operations. For example, by using the preceding statement, you could group operations as
x = (9 + 4) * 2 `results in 26
or
x = 9 + (4 * 2) `results in 17
In the next article, we shall study about strings and their implementations in VB
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