Operator Precedence

VBScript has a full range of operators, including arithmetic operators, comparison operators, concatenation operators, and logical operators.

When several operations occur in an expression, each part is evaluated and resolved in a predetermined order. That order is known as operator precedence. You can use parentheses to override the order of precedence and force some parts of an expression to be evaluated before others. Operations within parentheses are always performed before those outside. Within parentheses, however, normal operator precedence is maintained.

When expressions contain operators from more than one category, arithmetic operators are evaluated first, comparison operators are evaluated next, and logical operators are evaluated last. Comparison operators all have equal precedence; that is, they are evaluated in the left to right order in which they appear. Arithmetic and logical operators are evaluated in the following order of precedence.

Arithmetic		Comparison		Logical
Description	Symbol	Description	Symbol	Description	Symbol
Exponentiation	^	Equality	=	Logical negation	Not
Unary negation	-	Inequality	<>	Logical conjunction	And
Multiplication	*	Less than	<	Logical disjunction	Or
Division	/	Greater than	>	Logical exclusion	Xor
Integer division	\	Less than or equal to	<=	Logical equivalence	Eqv
Modulus arithmetic	Mod	Greater than or equal to	>=	Logical implication	Imp
Addition	+	Object equivalence	Is
Subtraction	-
String concatenation	&

When multiplication and division occur together in an expression, each operation is evaluated as it occurs from left to right. Likewise, when addition and subtraction occur together in an expression, each operation is evaluated in order of appearance from left to right.

The string concatenation operator (&) is not an arithmetic operator, but in precedence it does fall after all arithmetic operators and before all comparison operators. The Is operator is an object reference comparison operator. It does not compare objects or their values; it checks only to determine if two object references refer to the same object.