### 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.