Behaviour of increment and decrement operators in Python

Question

I notice that a pre-increment/decrement operator can be applied on a variable (like ++count). It compiles, but it does not actually change the value of the vari

Answer 1

While the others answers are correct in so far as they show what a mere + usually does (namely, leave the number as it is, if it is one), they are incomplete in so far as they don't explain what happens.

To be exact, +x evaluates to x.__pos__() and ++x to x.__pos__().__pos__().

I could imagine a VERY weird class structure (Children, don't do this at home!) like this:

class ValueKeeper(object):
    def __init__(self, value): self.value = value
    def __str__(self): return str(self.value)

class A(ValueKeeper):
    def __pos__(self):
        print 'called A.__pos__'
        return B(self.value - 3)

class B(ValueKeeper):
    def __pos__(self):
        print 'called B.__pos__'
        return A(self.value + 19)

x = A(430)
print x, type(x)
print +x, type(+x)
print ++x, type(++x)
print +++x, type(+++x)

Answer 2

++ is not an operator. It is two + operators. The + operator is the identity operator, which does nothing. (Clarification: the + and - unary operators only work on numbers, but I presume that you wouldn't expect a hypothetical ++ operator to work on strings.)

++count

Parses as

+(+count)

Which translates to

count

You have to use the slightly longer += operator to do what you want to do:

count += 1

I suspect the ++ and -- operators were left out for consistency and simplicity. I don't know the exact argument Guido van Rossum gave for the decision, but I can imagine a few arguments:

• Simpler parsing. Technically, parsing ++count is ambiguous, as it could be +, +, count (two unary + operators) just as easily as it could be ++, count (one unary ++ operator). It's not a significant syntactic ambiguity, but it does exist.
• Simpler language. ++ is nothing more than a synonym for += 1. It was a shorthand invented because C compilers were stupid and didn't know how to optimize a += 1 into the inc instruction most computers have. In this day of optimizing compilers and bytecode interpreted languages, adding operators to a language to allow programmers to optimize their code is usually frowned upon, especially in a language like Python that is designed to be consistent and readable.
• Confusing side-effects. One common newbie error in languages with ++ operators is mixing up the differences (both in precedence and in return value) between the pre- and post-increment/decrement operators, and Python likes to eliminate language "gotcha"-s. The precedence issues of pre-/post-increment in C are pretty hairy, and incredibly easy to mess up.

Answer 3

In Python, a distinction between expressions and statements is rigidly enforced, in contrast to languages such as Common Lisp, Scheme, or Ruby.

Wikipedia

So by introducing such operators, you would break the expression/statement split.

For the same reason you can't write

if x = 0:
  y = 1

as you can in some other languages where such distinction is not preserved.