Increment and Decrement Operators in C

Increment and decrement operators in c; In this tutorial, you will learn about increment operator ++ and the decrement operator — in detail with the help of c programming examples.

C programming Increment and Decrement Operators

In the C programming language, there is an operator known as an increment and decrement operator which is represented by ++ and — symbols. And it is used to increase and decrease the value of the variable by 1.

There are four types of Increment and decrement operator; as shown below:

C programming Increment and Decrement Operators
++a (Increment Prefix)
–a (Decrement Prefix)
a++ (Increment Postfix)
a– (Decrement Postfix)

Syntax of C programming Increment and Decrement Operators

See the syntax of C programming pre and post Increment & Decrement Operators; as shown below:

++var a; (or) var a++;
–-var a; (or) var a–-;

Note that:- About pre & post-increment and decrement operators in C; as shown below:

• If you use the ++ operator as a prefix like: ++var, the value of var is incremented by 1; then it returns the value.
• If you use the ++ operator as a postfix like: var++, the original value of var is returned first; then var is incremented by 1.

The -- the operator works in a similar way to the ++ operator except -- decreases the value by 1.

Example 1 – C programming Increment and Decrement Operators

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   int var1 = 5, var2 = 10;

   printf("%d\n", var1++);

   printf("%d\n", var2--);

   return 0;
}

Output:

5
10

Example 2 – Pre and post increment and decrement operators in C

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   int var1 = 20, var2 = 40;


   //Pre increment
   printf("%d\n", ++var1);

   //Pre decrement
   printf("%d\n", --var2);

   return 0;
}

Output:

21
39