Operators for Manipulating Data

This article illustrates how to use operators for manipulating data. Data manipulation involves performing calculations on numbers and manipulating strings. Programs manipulate and use variables in many ways, often depending on the type of the data.

Each data type has a number of operations - things that you can do to it. There are 3 major set of operators in most programming languages - Numeric or Arithmetic operators, Comparison operators and Logical operators. Let's know each set in detail.

Numeric or Arithmetic Operators

 +        Addition
 -        Subtraction
 *        Multiplication
 /        Division
 \        Integer division
 Mod      Modulus arithmetic
 &        String concatenation

Arithmetic operators for manipulating data include the familiar addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operators. There are some interesting variations such as the modulus (Mod) and integer division (\) available in visual basic. Take a look at the examples below to understand them better.

An Addition operation, the result here is 120

 Number1=100
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 + Number2

A Subtraction operation, the result here is 10

 Number1=20
 Number2=10
 Result=Number1 - Number2

A Multiplication operation, the result here is 400

 Number1=20
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 * Number2

A Division operation, the result here is 55.75

 Number1=1115
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 / Number2

An Integer division operation, the result here is 55

Note that this operation does not round off the result but eliminates the decimal part all together.

 Number1=1115
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 \ Number2

A Mod operation, the result here is 15.

This operation returns the remainder after an integer division operation.

 Number1=1115
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 Mod Number2

A String concatenation operation, the result here is John Sun

Firstname="John"
 Lastname="Sun"
 Result=Firstname & " " & Lastname

Comparison Operators

=       Equality
 <>      Inequality
 <       Less than
 >       Greater than
 <=      Less than or equal to
 >=      Greater than or equal to

These operators do not modify data. The purpose of a comparison is to produce a Boolean true or false value that can be used somewhere else in your program, usually used in conditional branching and conditional looping blocks. Take a look at the examples below.

An Equality check operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=100
 Number2=100
 Result=Number1 = Number2

An Inequality check operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=100
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 <> Number2

A Less than operation, the result here is FALSE

 Number1=200
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 < Number2

A Greater than operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=200
 Number2=20
 Result=Number1 > Number2

A Less than or equal to operation, the result here is FALSE

 Number1=150
 Number2=10
 Result=Number1 <= Number2

A Greater than or equal to operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=150
 Number2=150
 Result=Number1 >= Number2

Logical Operators

The last set of operators for manipulating data are the logical operators. There are two basic logical operators AND and OR, these operators have their own category because they only operate on boolean variables. Let's take a look at some examples.

An AND operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=100
 Number2=100
 Result= (Number1 = Number2) AND (Number1 < 200)

An OR operation, the result here is TRUE

 Number1=100
 Number2=200
 Result= (Number1 = Number2) OR (Number1 < 200)

That covers all the basic operators for manipulating data, the operators mentioned here are some of the commonly used across many languages. There are more operators you will learn about as you start writing programs in visual basic.

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