give me explanation for this statement

[krishna2006]

i am beginner and i am currently learing c and can u please help my explaing the meaning how it will execute of the following statement
printf ("%d\n",'-'-'-'-'/'/'/');
as the number of hi phens and slashes are changing the output is changing

[Banfa]

I trust you understand

printf ("%d\n", 5);

This is an instruction to output to stdout a string that will be made up of an interger (%d) and a new line (\n). The supplied integer value is 5.

in your code the supplied integer value is '-'-'-'-'/'/'/'

This looks confusing (and is probably meant to) but remember that 'x' is a character constant of type int where x can be and printable character or 1 of several special character code sequences (like '\n' for instance is a new line character).

So if we add some spaces to this

'-'-'-'-'/'/'/'

and then high light the character constants to make it easier to read it becomes

'-' - '-' - '/' / '/'

since division has a higher precedence it is evaluated first

'/' / '/'

this is equivilent to x / x, any non-zero thing divided by itself is 1 so the expression now is

'-' - '-' - 1

taking the first part

'-' - '-'

this is equivilent to x - x, anything subtracted from itself is 0 so the whole epression becomes

0 - 1

This is the value -1

This code will print -1 followed by a new line.