Operator precedence
operatorsLevel
Operators
When a complex expression contains multiple operators, operator precedence determines the
sequence of operations. The order of execution can significantly affect the resulting value.
Operators have the precedence levels shown in the following table. An operator on a higher
level is evaluated before an operator on a lower level. In the following table, 1 is the highest
level and 8 is the lowest level.
1
(bitwise
)
2
(multiplication),
(division),
(modulus)
3
(positive),
(negative),
(addition),
(concatenation),
(subtraction),
(bitwise
),
(bitwise exclusive
),
(bitwise
),
(bitwise left shift),
(bitwise right shift)
4
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
(comparison operators)
5
6
7
,
,
,
,
,
,
8
(assignment)
When two operators in an expression have the same precedence level, the evaluation happens
from left to right based on their position in the expression. For example, in the expression used
in the following
statement, the subtraction operator is evaluated before the addition
operator.
Expand table
Use parentheses to override the defined precedence of the operators in an expression.
Everything within parentheses is evaluated to yield a single value. Any operator outside those
parentheses can use that value.
For example, in the expression used in the following
statement, the multiplication operator
has a higher precedence than the addition operator. The multiplication operation is evaluated
first. The expression result is.
In the expression used in the following
statement, the parentheses cause the addition to
be evaluated first. The expression result is.
If an expression has nested parentheses, the most deeply nested expression is evaluated first.
The following example contains nested parentheses, with the expression
in the most
deeply nested set of parentheses. This expression yields a value of. Then, the addition
operator (
) adds this result to
, which yields a value of. Finally, the
is multiplied by
to
yield an expression result of.
Logical operators (Transact-SQL)