This page is also available in 2 other languages

Change language

English

The Arduino Reference text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Find anything that can be improved? Suggest corrections and new documentation via GitHub.

Doubts on how to use Github? Learn everything you need to know in this tutorial.

Last Revision: Searching...

Last Build: 2022/07/01

Reference > Language > Structure > Compound operators > Decrement

--

[Compound Operators]

Description

Decrements the value of a variable by 1.

Syntax

x--; // decrement x by one and returns the old value of x
--x; // decrement x by one and returns the new value of x

Parameters

x: variable. Allowed data types: int, long (possibly unsigned).

Returns

The original or newly decremented value of the variable.

Example Code

x = 2;
y = --x;  // x now contains 1, y contains 1
y = x--;  // x contains 0, but y still contains 1

See also