Operator Associativity - Right-associativity of Assignment Operators

Right-associativity of Assignment Operators

Assignment operators in imperative programming languages are usually defined to be right-associative. For example, in C, the assignment a = b is an expression that returns a value (namely, b converted to the type of a) with the side effect of setting a to this value. An assignment can be performed in the middle of an expression. (An expression can be made into a statement by following it with a semicolon; i.e. a = b is an expression but a = b; is a statement). The right-associativity of the = operator allows expressions such as a = b = c to be interpreted as a = (b = c), thereby setting both a and b to the value of c. The alternative (a = b) = c does not make sense because a = b is not an lvalue.