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Message: [QUOTE="Don Bruder, post: 3783949"] [i] Based on the specific way the query was phrased I'd say that order of evaluation has practically *EVERYTHING* to do with his question. (an impression which is further reinforced by seeing his responses in the rest of the thread) A difference meaningful only to a compiler, or someone writing one, not to a person trying to understand a piece of code. Since (most of) us poor humans can typically only solve one piece of an equation at a time, it's long been standard to evaluate expressions in a step-wise manner, according to long-standing rules - one of the most basic being "left to right unless otherwise specified by parenthesis". True enough - at the compiler level. At the "I'm trying to understand what's going on here" level, it seems to me like something pretty crucial. In this case, it appears that the order is critical, at least to the poster's understanding of what the code is trying to do. It may or may not be of importance to the compiler. But since it isn't the compiler asking the question... Consider trying to tailor your response to the question being asked - If someone asks "what's 2+2?" you wouldn't launch into some obscure chunk of number theory that proves that the answer is 5 in certain dimensions, would you? By flinging around "chapter and verse according to things deep in the guts of the compiler", that's pretty much what you're doing.[/i] [/QUOTE]