The decrement operator -- decreases the value of an operand by 1. Like the increment operator, it can be written before or after the operand.

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    int number = 5;

    number--;

    printf("number = %d\n", number);

    return 0;
}

Example Output #

number = 4

Explanation #

The decrement operator is applied to number:

number--;

This decreases its value from 5 to 4.

The decrement operator has two forms:

--number;
number--;

Both forms decrease the operand by 1. The difference between the prefix and postfix forms matters when the decrement operation is used as part of a larger expression.