Java – Unary Operator Prefix and Postfix Operand Explained

Increment/Decrement Unary Operators

The beauty of unary operators is that, they require only single operand to get the same result as compare to the arithmetic operators; they perform various operations such as increment(++)/decrement(–) a value by one, negating an expression, or inverting the value of a boolean.

Operator	Description
++	Increment operator; increments a value by 1
—	Decrement operator; decrements a value by 1

Prefix & Postfix

(++result) evaluates to the incremented value, whereas the postfix version (result++) evaluates to the original value

public class Main{
    public static void main(String[] args){
        int i = 3;
        System.out.println(i); // prints 3
        System.out.println(i++); // prints 3 but not 4
        System.out.println(++i); //print 5
    }
}

3
3
5