I hope we all know what operator precedence means… but just in case it’s fuzzy, I’ll illustrate with a simple example from junior high school.

What does this mean?

1 + 2 * 3

It’s either 9 or 7, right?

It depends on the order in which we apply the + and * operations.

I’m sure most of us agree that the correct answer is actually 7, because multiplication takes precedence over addition. That is to say, the proper steps to solving this equation are to first multiply 2 * 3, leaving us with 1 + 6, then do the addition.

If we want the answer 9, we can specify this by using parenthesis:

(1 + 2) * 3

Now we do the 1 + 2 addition first, leaving 3 * 3, which we then solve to 9.

Go has the same concept, and below are the rules for which operators take precedence when:

Operator precedence

Unary operators have the highest precedence. As the ++ and -- operators form statements, not expressions, they fall outside the operator hierarchy. As a consequence, statement *p++ is the same as (*p)++.

There are five precedence levels for binary operators. Multiplication operators bind strongest, followed by addition operators, comparison operators, && (logical AND), and finally || (logical OR):

Precedence    Operator
    5             *  /  %  <<  >>  &  &^
    4             +  -  |  ^
    3             ==  !=  <  <=  >  >=
    2             &&
    1             ||

Binary operators of the same precedence associate from left to right. For instance, x / y * z is the same as (x / y) * z.

+x
23 + 3*x[i]
x <= f()
^a >> b
f() || g()
x == y+1 && <-chanInt > 0

Quotes from The Go Programming Language Specification Version of August 2, 2023