Question

Take a look at the following code:

class experiment{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int k = 3;

        while (k-- > 0) {
            System.out.println(k + "\n");
        }
    }
}

Expected output:

2
1

Actual output:

2
1
0

Postfix operators have higher precedence than operational operators. Hence k-- should be evaluated first before the k > 0, but looking at the output, k > 0 gets evaluated first. Do I miss something simple here?

Answer 1

Precedence has nothing to do with it. The value of ‘k–‘ is ‘k’. There is a side-effect of post-decrementing ‘k’ but it doesn’t affect the operand value.