Increment and Decrement Operators in Java

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The incremental operator ++ increments a value by one.
The value may be a property of an object, an element of an array containing numbers or a variable.

The ++ operator can be positioned before or after the operand on which it operates.
If it is positioned before the operand, that operand is incremented before it is used in a possible expression.
Likewise, if it's positioned after the operand, the expression is evaluated before the increment is being done.

A couple of examples:

int i = 0;

if (++i == 1) {
   System.out.println("The value of i is 1");
} else {
   System.out.println("The value of i is not 1");
}

if (i++ == 2) {
   System.out.println("The value of i is 2");
} else {
   System.out.println("The value of i is not 2");
}

System.out.println("Now the value is " + i);

As you probably have guessed, the output of the above code is:

The value of i is 1
The value of i is not 2
Now the value is 2

The -- operator behaves similarily but of course instead of incrementing values it decrements them by one.

Another way of incrementing and decrementing a variable is:

int i = 0;

i = i + 1;

i = i - 1;

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