Unary Operators

Unary operators (e.g. descendantOf, descendantOrSelfOf, ancestorOf, ancestorOrSelfOf, memberOf) are applied from inside to out (i.e. from right to left). For example, when the following expression constraint is processed, the memberOf operator is applied first to the Example problem list concepts reference set, and then the descendants of the referenced components are determined.

Binary Operators

Whenever potential ambiguity in binary operator precedence may occur, round brackets must be used to clearly disambiguate the order in which these operators are applied. For example, the following expression constraint is not valid:

And must be expressed using brackets, as either: or: When multiple exclusion operators (i.e. 'minus') are applied, brackets are similarly required. For example, the following expression constraint is not valid: And must be expressed using brackets, as either: or: However, when only a single binary operator is used, or when all binary operators are either conjunction (i.e. 'and') or disjunction (i.e. 'or'), brackets are not required. For example, all of the following expression constraints are valid without brackets: Please note that unary operators are always applied before binary operators.