### 4.5 Increment and decrement operators

Octave includes the C-like increment and decrement operators ``++`' and ``--`' in both their prefix and postfix forms.

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.

It is not currently possible to increment index expressions. For example, you might expect that the expression v`(4)++` would increment the fourth element of the vector v, but instead it results in a parse error. This problem may be fixed in a future release of Octave.