C Increment and Decrement Operators
C programming has two operators increment ++ and decrement -- to change the value of an operand (constant or variable) by 1.
Increment ++ increases the value by 1 whereas decrement -- decreases the value by 1. These two operators are unary operators, meaning they only operate on a single operand.
Example:
int a = 10, b = 100;
float c = 10.5, d = 100.5;
printf("++a = %d \n", ++a); // Output: 11
printf("--b = %d \n", --b); // Output: 99
printf("++c = %f \n", ++c); // Output: 11.5
printf("--d = %f \n", --d); // Output: 99.5
Here, the operators ++ and -- are used as prefixes. These two operators can also be used as postfixes like a++ and a--. Visit this page to learn more about how increment and decrement operators work when used as postfix.
C Increment and Decrement Operators on Chars
In C, characters can be treated as integers and can be incremented and decremented just like integers. The increment operator ++ and decrement operator -- can be used with characters to increase or decrease their ASCII code values.
Example:
char ch = 'A'; ch++; // increment ch by 1
printf("%c", ch); // outputs 'B'char ch = 'B'; ch--; // decrement ch by 1
printf("%c", ch); // outputs 'A'Note that when a character variable is incremented or decremented, its ASCII code value changes, not its character representation. Therefore, incrementing ‘z’ (which has an ASCII code value of 122) will result in ’{’ (which has an ASCII code value of 123), not ‘a’. Similarly, decrementing ‘A’ (which has an ASCII code value of 65) will result in ’@’ (which has an ASCII code value of 64), not ‘Z’.