5.8 Increment and decrement operators

If you like the ‘++’, ‘+=’ etc operators, rejoice! Octave includes the C-like increment and decrement operators ‘++’ and ‘--’ in both their prefix and postfix forms, in addition to ‘+=’, ‘-=’, ‘*=’, ‘/=’, ‘^=’, ‘.*=’, ‘./=’, and ‘.^=’.

For example, to pre-increment the variable x, you would write ++x. This would add one to x and then return the new value of x as the result of the expression. It is exactly the same as the expression x = x + 1.

To post-increment a variable x, you would write x++. This adds one to the variable x, but returns the value that x had prior to incrementing it. For example, if x is equal to 2, the result of the expression x++ is 2, and the new value of x is 3.

For matrix and vector arguments, the increment and decrement operators work on each element of the operand.