Editing Operator (computer programming) (section)

== Operand coercion ==
{{further|Type conversion}}
Some languages implicitly convert (aka [[Type conversion#Implicit type conversion|coerce]]) operands to be compatible with each other. For example, [[Perl]] coercion rules cause <code>12 + "3.14"</code> to evaluate to <code>15.14</code>. The string literal <code>"3.14"</code> is converted to the numeric value 3.14 before addition is applied. Further, <code>3.14</code> is treated as floating point so the result is floating point even though <code>12</code> is an integer literal. [[JavaScript]] follows different rules so that the same expression evaluates to <code>"123.14"</code> since <code>12</code> is converted to a string which is then concatenated with the second operand.

In general, a programmer must be aware of the specific rules regarding operand coercion in order to avoid unexpected and incorrect behavior.