Groovy Operators - Power Operator

In following tutorial we will quickly go through all the operators which both Java and Groovy support.

We will also understand Groovy specific power operator.

Arithmetic operators

Groovy supports all Java arithmetic operators i.e. +, -, *, / and %.

The power operator

Additionally Groovy includes a new operator ** in the list. this operator is used to perform power operation.

println 2**4

16

As Groovy converts primitives to corresponding Number wrappers (tutorial), the resultant value of all above operators will also be also one of the Number type:

def x = 2 * 2.1 //groovy always converts decimal number to bigDecimal 
println x
println x.getClass()
println x.add(3)//using BigDecimal.add() method.

4.2
class java.math.BigDecimal
7.2

def x = 2.1 ** 2 
println x
println x.getClass()
println x.toBigInteger()

4.41
class java.math.BigDecimal
4

Unary operators

All Java unary operators are supported:

+    for positive value of the operand, 
-    for negative value of the operand,
++   increment, postfix/prefix,
--   decrement, post/prefix and 
!    logical complement operator 

Assignment arithmetic operators

All assignment operators of Java are supported in the same way. These operators are =, +=, -=, *=, /= and %=

Additionally Groovy also has assignment operator for its power operation i.e. **=

def x = 5
x **= 3// same as x = x**3
println x

125

Equality and Rational operator

Same as Java:
== (equal), != (not equal), < (less than), <= (less than or equal), > (greater than) and >= (greater than or equal).

Rational operators (Conditional operators)

Same as Java:
&& (logical and), || (logical or) and ! (logical not).
&& and || also exhibit 'short-circuiting behavior).

Bitwise operators

Same as Java:
& (bitwise and), | (bitwise or), ^ (bitwise xor) and ~ (bitwise negation).

Ternary operator

Same as Java:
result = boolean expression? result1: result2