The operators at the top of this list are evaluated first. Operators within a group have the same precedence. All operators have left-to-right associativity unless otherwise noted.

One important aspect of C++ that is related to operator precedence, is the order of evaluation and the order of side effects in expressions. In most circumstances, the order in which things happen is not specified. For example in f() + g() whether f() or g() is called first is not specified. If at least one of the functions has side effects the results may differ across compilers, different versions of the same compiler or even between multiple runs of the same compiler.

Further, the effect of certain expressions is undefined. For example, consider the following code:

    float x = 1;
    x = x / ++x;

The value of x and the rest of the behaviour of the program after evaluating this expression is undefined. The program is semantically ill-formed: x is modified twice between two consecutive sequence points.

Expressions like the one above must be avoided. When in doubt, break a large expression into multiple statements to ensure that the order of evaluation is correct.

Overloading of operators can be very useful and very dangerous. On one hand overloading operators for a class you have created can help with logistics and readability of code. On the other hand you can overload an operator in such a way that it can either obfuscate or just downright break your program. Use carefully. In particular never overload &&, || or ,. In the overloaded context they lose the guarantee that the left operand is evaluated before the second and that there is a sequence point inbetween.

There are two ways to over load an operator: global function or class member.

Example of overloading with a global function:

     ostream& operator <<(ostream& os, const myClass& rhs);

But to be able to reach any private data within a user defined class you have to declare the global function as a friend within the definition of the class.

Example:

     class myClass {
 
       // Gives the operator << function access to 'myData'
       // (this declaration should not go in public, private or protected)
       friend ostream& operator <<(ostream& lhs, const myClass& rhs);
 
       private:
         int myData;
     }

Overloading with a class member can be done as follows:

     class myClass {
 
       public:
         // The left hand side of this operator becomes '*this'.
         int operator +(const myClass& rhs);
 
       private:
         int myData;
     }