<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Operators</title> </head> <body><div class="manualnavbar" style="text-align: center;"> <div class="prev" style="text-align: left; float: left;"><a href="language.expressions.html">Expressions</a></div> <div class="next" style="text-align: right; float: right;"><a href="language.operators.precedence.html">Operator Precedence</a></div> <div class="up"><a href="langref.html">Language Reference</a></div> <div class="home"><a href="index.html">PHP Manual</a></div> </div><hr /><div id="language.operators" class="chapter"> <h1>Operators</h1> <h2>Table of Contents</h2><ul class="chunklist chunklist_chapter"><li><a href="language.operators.precedence.html">Operator Precedence</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.arithmetic.html">Arithmetic Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.assignment.html">Assignment Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.bitwise.html">Bitwise Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.comparison.html">Comparison Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.errorcontrol.html">Error Control Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.execution.html">Execution Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.increment.html">Incrementing/Decrementing Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.logical.html">Logical Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.string.html">String Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.array.html">Array Operators</a></li><li><a href="language.operators.type.html">Type Operators</a></li></ul> <p class="simpara"> An operator is something that takes one or more values (or expressions, in programming jargon) and yields another value (so that the construction itself becomes an expression). </p> <p class="para"> Operators can be grouped according to the number of values they take. Unary operators take only one value, for example <em>!</em> (the <a href="language.operators.logical.html" class="link">logical not operator</a>) or <em>++</em> (the <a href="language.operators.increment.html" class="link">increment operator</a>). Binary operators take two values, such as the familiar <a href="language.operators.arithmetic.html" class="link">arithmetical operators</a> <em>+</em> (plus) and <em>-</em> (minus), and the majority of PHP operators fall into this category. Finally, there is a single <a href="language.operators.comparison.html#language.operators.comparison.ternary" class="link">ternary operator</a>, <em>? :</em>, which takes three values; this is usually referred to simply as "the ternary operator" (although it could perhaps more properly be called the conditional operator). </p> <p class="para"> A full list of PHP operators follows in the section <a href="language.operators.precedence.html" class="link">Operator Precedence</a>. The section also explains operator precedence and associativity, which govern exactly how expressions containing several different operators are evaluated. </p> </div> <hr /><div class="manualnavbar" style="text-align: center;"> <div class="prev" style="text-align: left; float: left;"><a href="language.expressions.html">Expressions</a></div> <div class="next" style="text-align: right; float: right;"><a href="language.operators.precedence.html">Operator Precedence</a></div> <div class="up"><a href="langref.html">Language Reference</a></div> <div class="home"><a href="index.html">PHP Manual</a></div> </div></body></html>
