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14 views12 pages

Expression

Uploaded by

srinivasansarah
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chapter 6

Arithmetic Expressions
- Their evaluation was one of the motivations for the
development of the first programming languages

- Arithmetic expressions consist of operators,


operands, parentheses, and function calls

Design issues for arithmetic expressions:


1. What are the operator precedence rules?

2. What are the operator associativity rules?

3. What is the order of operand evaluation?

4. Are there restrictions on operand evaluation


side effects?

5. Does the language allow user-defined operator


overloading?

6. What mode mixing is allowed in expressions?

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 1


Chapter 6
A unary operator has one operand

A binary operator has two operands

A ternary operator has three operands

Def: The operator precedence rules for expression


evaluation define the order in which “adjacent”
operators of different precedence levels are
evaluated
(“adjacent” means they are separated by at
most one operand)

- Typical precedence levels


1. parentheses
2. unary operators
3. ** (if the language supports it)
4. *, /
5. +, -

Def: The operator associativity rules for expression


evaluation define the order in which adjacent
operators with the same precedence level are
evaluated

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 2


Chapter 6
- Typical associativity rules:
- Left to right, except **, which is right to left
- Sometimes unary operators associate right to
left (e.g., FORTRAN)

- APL is different; all operators have equal


precedence and all operators associate right to
left

Precedence and associativity rules can be


overriden with parentheses

Operand evaluation order


- The process:
1. Variables: just fetch the value
2. Constants: sometimes a fetch from memory;
sometimes the constant is in the machine
language instruction
3. Parenthesized expressions: evaluate all
operands and operators first
4. Function references: The case of most interest!
- Order of evaluation is crucial

Functional side effects - when a function changes


a two-way parameter or a nonlocal variable

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 3


Chapter 6
The problem with functional side effects:
- When a function referenced in an expression
alters another operand of the expression
e.g., for a parameter change:
a = 10;
b = a + fun(&a);
/* Assume that fun changes its parameter */

Two Possible Solutions to the Problem:

1. Write the language definition to disallow


functional side effects

- No two-way parameters in functions


- No nonlocal references in functions

- Advantage: it works!
- Disadvantage: Programmers want the flexibility
of two-way parameters (what about C?) and
nonlocal references

2. Write the language definition to demand that


operand evaluation order be fixed

- Disadvantage: limits some compiler


optimizations

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 4


Chapter 6
Conditional Expressions
- C, C++, and Java (?:)
e.g.
average = (count == 0)? 0 : sum / count;

Operator Overloading
- Some is common (e.g., + for int and float)

- Some is potential trouble (e.g., * in C and C++)

- Loss of compiler error detection (omission of


an operand should be a detectable error)
- Can be avoided by introduction of new symbols
(e.g., Pascal’s div)

- C++ and Ada allow user-defined overloaded


operators

Potential problems:

- Users can define nonsense operations


- Readability may suffer

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 5


Chapter 6
Implicit Type Conversions
Def: A narrowing conversion is one that converts
an object to a type that cannot include all of
the values of the original type

Def: A widening conversion is one in which an


object is converted to a type that can include
at least approximations to all of the values of
the original type

Def: A mixed-mode expression is one that has


operands of different types

Def: A coercion is an implicit type conversion

- The disadvantage of coercions:

- They decrease in the type error detection


ability of the compiler

- In most languages, all numeric types are coerced


in expressions, using widening conversions

- In Modula-2 and Ada, there are virtually no


coercions in expressions

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 6


Chapter 6
Explicit Type Conversions
- Often called casts

e.g.
Ada:
FLOAT(INDEX) -- INDEX is INTEGER type

C:
(int)speed /* speed is float type */

Errors in Expressions
- Caused by:

- Inherent limitations of arithmetic


e.g. division by zero

- Limitations of computer arithmetic


e.g. overflow

- Such errors are often ignored by the run-time


system

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 7


Chapter 6
Relational Expressions
- Use relational operators and operands of various
types
- Evaluate to some boolean representation
- Operator symbols used vary somewhat among
languages (!=, /=, .NE., <>, #)

Boolean Expressions
- Operands are boolean and the result is boolean

- Operators:

FORTRAN 77 FORTRAN 90 C Ada

.AND. and && and


.OR. or || or
.NOT. not ! not
xor

- C has no boolean type--it uses int type with 0


for false and nonzero for true

- One odd characteristic of C’s expressions:


a < b < c is a legal expression, but the
result is not what you might expect

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 8


Chapter 6
Precedence of All Operators:
Pascal: not, unary -
*, /, div, mod, and
+, -, or
relops

Ada: **
*, /, mod, rem
unary -, not
+ , -, &
relops
and, or, xor

C, C++, and Java have over 50 operators and 17


different levels of precedence

Short Circuit Evaluation


Pascal: does not use short-circuit evaluation
Problem: table look-up

index := 1;
while (index <= length) and
(LIST[index] <> value) do
index := index + 1

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 9


Chapter 6
C, C++, and Java: use short-circuit evaluation for
the usual Boolean operators (&& and ||), but
also provide bitwise Boolean operators that are
not short circuit (& and |)

Ada: programmer can specify either (short-circuit


is specified with and then and or else)

FORTRAN 77: short circuit, but any side-affected


place must be set to undefined

Short-circuit evaluation exposes the potential


problem of side effects in expressions
e.g. (a > b) || (b++ / 3)

Assignment Statements
The operator symbol:
1. = FORTRAN, BASIC, PL/I, C, C++, Java
2. := ALGOLs, Pascal, Modula-2, Ada

= can be bad if it is overloaded for the


relational operator for equality

e.g. (PL/I) A = B = C;

Note difference from C

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 10


Chapter 6
More complicated assignments:
1. Multiple targets (PL/I)

A, B = 10

2. Conditional targets (C, C++, and Java)

(first = true) ? total : subtotal = 0

3. Compound assignment operators (C, C++, and


Java)

sum += next;

4. Unary assignment operators (C, C++, and Java)


a++;

C, C++, and Java treat = as an arithmetic binary


operator

e.g.

a = b * (c = d * 2 + 1) + 1

This is inherited from ALGOL 68

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 11


Chapter 6
Assignment as an Expression
- In C, C++, and Java, the assignment statement
produces a result
- So, they can be used as operands in
expressions

e.g. while ((ch = getchar() != EOF) { ... }

Disadvantage
- Another kind of expression side effect

Mixed-Mode Assignment
- In FORTRAN, C, and C++, any numeric value can
be assigned to any numeric scalar variable;
whatever conversion is necessary is done

- In Pascal, integers can be assigned to reals, but


reals cannot be assigned to integers (the
programmer must specify whether the conversion
from real to integer is truncated or rounded)

- In Java, only widening assignment coercions are


done

- In Ada, there is no assignment coercion

Copyright © 1998 by Addison -Wesley Longman, Inc. 12

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