Translator – A Unary Operator Curiosity

One of the test statements created for testing the unary operator fix was:

A = -B^NOT C% + -D*NOT E%

The intention of this statement was test the NOT unary operator in front of the second operand of both the exponentiation and multiplication operators. The translation of this statement was expected to be (the blue expression being the first operand and the red expression being the second operand of the addition):

A<ref> B C% NOT ^* Neg D Neg E% NOT *%2 + Assign

However, what was produced was this unexpected translation:

A<ref> B C% D Neg E% NOT *%2 +%1 Cvtint NOT ^* Neg Assign

Upon reviewing the precedence of the operators (see Translator – Operator Precedence) and the code, it turns out that this translation was correct. The ADD is higher precedence than the NOT, so the operands of the ADD are C% and the –D*NOT E% expression with MUL (*%2) higher precedence than ADD, its operands are the –D and NOT E%).

So while the exponentiation is highest precedence, with NOT having a low precedence allowed the ADD to bind the rest of the expression to the NOT, which becomes the second operand (yellow above) of the exponentiation, with the first negation being the final operator. In C/C++, the not (!) and negation (-) operators are very high precedence (and there is no exponentiation operator). But here, NOT was given a low precedence just above the other logical operators but below the math operators (see Translator – Operator Precedence for reasoning). Normally the NOT operator would probably not be used in the same expression as exponentiation like above.