Clarify operator precedence terminology and improve examples in Visual Basic documentation #48257
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Co-authored-by: BillWagner <[email protected]>
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| @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ When several operations occur in an expression, each part is evaluated and resol | |||
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| ## Precedence Order | |||
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| Operators are evaluated in the following order of precedence: | |||
| Operators are evaluated in the following order of precedence. Operators listed first have higher precedence and are evaluated before operators listed later: | |||
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It's not clear that the "following" refers to the H3 headings order, so I'd add an index to the H3 headings here.
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The Visual Basic operator precedence documentation was confusing because it mixed "evaluated in the following order" and "greater precedence" terminology without clearly explaining their relationship. Additionally, the numeric example appeared to contradict the description, leading to user confusion about why multiplication and division operators are evaluated before addition and subtraction.
This PR makes minimal, targeted improvements to clarify the documentation:
Changes Made:
Connected precedence terminology: Added explicit explanation that "Higher precedence means these operators are evaluated first" in the Precedence Rules section to clarify the relationship between "greater precedence" and evaluation order.
Clarified Precedence Order section: Enhanced the introduction to state "Operators listed first have higher precedence and are evaluated before operators listed later" to make the list ordering crystal clear.
Enhanced example explanation: Added detailed comment explaining why the expression
f = a - b + c / d * eevaluates asf = (a - b) + ((c / d) * e), specifically noting that "Division and multiplication (/, *) have higher precedence than addition and subtraction (+, -), so c / d * e is evaluated first, then the addition and subtraction from left to right."The mathematical example was already correct, but now readers can clearly understand why it works the way it does. These changes preserve all existing content while eliminating the terminology confusion that was causing reader difficulties.
Fixes #20696.
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