Increment/Decrement operators

The increment/decrement operators can be applied before (prefix) or after (postfix) the operand. The code result++; and ++result; will both end in result being incremented by one. The only difference is that*the prefix version (++result) evaluates to the incremented value, whereas the postfix version (result++) evaluates to the original value. If you are just performing a simple increment/decrement, it doesn’t really matter which version you choose. But if you use this operator in part of a larger expression, the one that you choose may make a significant difference.

The following program, PrePostDemo, illustrates the prefix/postfix unary increment operator:

class PrePostDemo {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int i = 3;
    i++;
    System.out.println(i); // "4"
    ++i;
    System.out.println(i);   // "5"
    System.out.println(++i); // "6"
    System.out.println(i++); // "6"
    System.out.println(i);   // "7"
  }
}

1. Java Language Basic