Mmm, that doesn't say what you think it says.

"Operator associativity" defines what happens if a sequence of the same operators is used one after another: whether the evaluator will evaluate the left operations first or the right. For example, in "8 - 4 - 2", subtraction is left associative so Perl evaluates the expression left to right. "8 - 4" is evaluated first making the expression "4 - 2 == 2" and not "8 - 2 == 6".

This answers the question "Which minus operator will be evaluated first?" But our question is different: "Will a given operator evaluate its left-hand or right-hand argument first?"

In other words, what if the code were foo() - bar() - baz()? Will foo() execute before bar(), or the reverse? Operator associativity has nothing to say about that. This is the same issue as $i++ * $i and foo($i++, $i).

I've looked through the docs, and it's not there. Perl doesn't define the evaluation order of subexpressions.

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