Question about the parentheses

Question

Look at this code snippet: Console .WriteLine( 9 > 7 is  + (9 > 7)); All it does is print 9 > 7 is True. to the screen. The parentheses are necessary otherwise the compiler complains saying Operator ' >' cannot be applied to operands string and int. I'm trying to understand the compilers message. All I understand is that by putting parentheses around the (9 > 7) part you force the compiler to evaluate what's in them first. So if I remove the parentheses what is the compiler trying to do when it says Operator '>' cannot be applied to operands string and int? Is it trying to perform a comparison between the string 9 > 7 is and the > 7 or the 9 > 7 part?

Tim Kangas · Answer

Thanks. I understand what's going on with it now.

Alan · Answer

If you remove the parenthesis from (9 > 7) then the first operation the compiler does is: 9 > 7 is  + 9 This results in the string 9 > 7 is 9. Let's call it 's'. It then attempts this operation: s > 7 However this fails because the '>' operator is not defined when the first operand is a string and the second is an int. The surprise here is that a strongly typed language such as C# permits the first operation which to me is very VB'ish. However it does and so you occasionally get these rather strange compiler errors :)