compound assignment operator

The *compound assignment operators* (also called *combination assignment operators*) provide a more concise way of creating [[expression?]]s by enabling calculations involving a variable to be performed without the variable being included in the right hand [[operand?]].

 $value += 3;  #   $value = $value + 3
 $value /= 3;  #   $value = $value / 3

Arithmetic

Operator precedence

Care should be taken when compound assignment operators are used within an [[expression?]]. Without parentheses, the compound assignment operators may have a lower precedence than the other operators around them, causing unexpected results to occur:

 a = b + c += 2 ;   # Syntax error: you cannot assign to 'b + c'. This is equivalent to a = (b + c) += 2
 a = b + (c += 2) ; # Ok, fixed. This expression increments c by 2 then adds it to b

There are no logical compound assignment operators in awk

The awk extraction and reporting language does not provide support for logical compound assignment operators:

 # This will not work because there are
 # no logical compound assignment operators in awk
 myflag ||= yourflag
 myflag &&= bobsflag