c#step14

C# Operators

Operator in C# is a special symbol that specifies which operations to perform on operands. For example, in mathematics the plus symbol (+) signifies the sum of the left and right numbers. In the same way, C# has many operators that have different meanings based on the data types of the operands. C# operators usually have one or two operands. Operators that have one operand are called Unary operators.

The following table list some of the operators available in C#.

Operator category	Operators
Primary	x.y
Unary	+x
Multiplicative	x * y
Additive	x + y
Shift	x << y
Relational and type testing	x < y
Equality	x == y
Logical AND	x & y
Logical XOR	x ^ y
Logical OR	x | y
Conditional AND	x && y
Conditional OR	x || y
Null-coalescing	x ?? y
Conditional	?:
Assignment and lambda expression	x = y

As mentioned before, certain operators have different meanings based on the datatype of the operand. For example, if the + operator is used with numbers, it will add the numbers but if it is used with strings, it will concatenate the two strings.

When an operator does different things based on the datatype of the operands, it is called operator over loading.

The following C# code shows the use of the + sign operator on different datatypes:

Example: + Operator

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string message1 = "Hello";

    string message2 = message1 + " World!!";    

    Console.WriteLine(message2);

    int i = 10, j = 20;

    int sum = i + j;

    Console.WriteLine("{0} + {1} = {2}", i, j, sum);

}

Try it

Output:

Hello World!! 
10 + 20 = 30.

This tutorial doesn't cover detail of each operators. Visit MSDN to learn all the operators in detail.