The “Goes-to” Operator?

#include <stdio.h>
int main () {
    int x = 10;
    while( x --> 0 ) {    // x goes to 0
        printf("%d ", x);
    }
}

What??

My first impression after seeing the above code was WTH. Never did I ever hear of such “goes-to” operator in C or C++. Is this some kind of magic?

Well… No.

while ( x --> 0 )

This is simply the same as:

while ( (x--) > 0 )

Since operator– takes higher precedence than operator>, the code would post decrement x first, and then compare x to 0. Coupled with the while loop, this creates a “goes-to” illusion of some sort of range operation.

Now, isn’t C simply brilliant?

I read this from a StackOverflow post.