Operators

Arithmetic operators

There are five arithmetic operators in Pine Script:

+	Addition
-	Subtraction
*	Multiplication
/	Division
%	Modulo (remainder after division)

The arithmetic operators above are all binary, whith + and - also serving as unary operators.

When using arithmetic operators, the type of the result depends on the type of the operands. If at least one of the operands is a series, then the result will also have a series type. If both operands are numeric, but at least one of these has the type float, then the result will also have the type float. If both operands are of type integer, then the result will also have the type integer. If at least one operand is na then the result is also na.

The + operator also serves as the concatenation operator for strings. "EUR"+"USD" constructs the “EURUSD” string.

Comparison operators

There are six comparison operators in Pine Script:

<	Less Than
<=	Less Than or Equal To
!=	Not Equal
==	Equal
>	Greater Than
>=	Greater Than or Equal To

Comparison operations are binary. The result is determined by the type of the operands. If at least one of these operands has a series type, then the type of the result will also be series (a series of logical values). If both operands have a numerical type, then the result will be of the logical type bool.

Logical operators

There are three logical operators in Pine Script:

not	Negation
and	Logical Conjunction
or	Logical Disjunction

All logical operators can operate with bool operands, numerical operands, or series type operands. As is the case with arithmetic and comparison operators, if at least one of the operands is of series type, then the result will also be of series type. In all other cases the type of the result will be the logical type bool.

The operator not is unary. When applied to a true operand the result will be false, and vice versa.

and operator truth table:

a	b	a and b
true	true	true
true	false	false
false	true	false
false	false	false

or operator truth table:

a	b	a or b
true	true	true
true	false	true
false	true	true
false	false	false

?: conditional operator and the iff function

The ?: conditional ternary operator calculates the first expression (condition) and returns the value of either the second operand (if the condition is true) or of the third operand (if the condition is false). Syntax is:

condition ? result1 : result2

If condition is true then the ternary operator will return result1, otherwise it will return result2.

A combination of conditional operators can build constructs similar to switch statements in other languages. For example:

isintraday ? red : isdaily ? green : ismonthly ? blue : na

The example is calculated from left to right. First, the isintraday condition is calculated; if it is true then red will be the result. If it is false then isdaily is calculated, if this is true, then green will be the result. If it is false, then ismonthly is calculated. If it is true, then blue will be the result, otherwise na will be the result.

For those who find using the ?: operator syntax inconvenient, there is an alternative: the built-in iff function. The function has the following signature:

iff(condition, result1, result2)

The function acts identically to the ?: operator, i.e., if the condition is true then it returns result1, otherwise result2. This is the equivalent of the previous example using iff:

iff(isintraday, red, iff(isdaily, green,
                     iff(ismonthly, blue, na)))

History reference operator []

It is possible to refer to the historical values of any variable of the series type with the [] operator. Historical values are variable values for the previous bars.

Most data in Pine is stored in series (somewhat like arrays, but with a dynamic index). Let’s see how the index is dynamic, and why series are also very different from arrays. In Pine, the close variable, or close[0] which is equivalent, holds the price at the close of the current bar. If your code is now executing on the third bar of the dataset, close will contain the price at the close of that bar, close[1] will contain the price at the close of the preceding bar (the second), and close[2], the first. close[3] will return na because no bar exists in that position, and thus its value is not available.

When the same code is executed on the next bar, the fourth in the dataset, close will now contain the closing price of that bar, and the same close[1] used in your code will now refer to the close of the third bar. The close of the first bar in the dataset will now be close[3] and this time close[4] will return na.

In the Pine runtime environment, as your code is executed once for each historical bar in the dataset, starting from the left of the chart, Pine is adding a new element in the series at index 0 and pushing the pre-existing elements in the series one index further away. Arrays, in comparison, are usually static in size and their content or indexing structure is not modified by the runtime environment. Pine series are thus very different from arrays and share familiarity with them mostly through their indexing syntax.

At the realtime, close variable represents the current price and will only contain the actual closing price of the realtime bar the last time the script is executed on that bar, and from then on, when it is referred to using the history-referencing operator.

Pine has a variable that keeps track of the bar count: bar_index. On the first bar, bar_index is equal to 0 and it increases by 1 at each new bar, so at the last bar, bar_index is equal to the number of bars in the dataset minus one.

There is another important consideration to keep in mind when using the [] operator in Pine. We have seen cases when a history reference may return the na value. na represents a value which is not a number and using it in any math expression will produce a result that is also na (similar to NaN). Such cases often happen during the script’s calculations in the early bars of the dataset, but can also occur in later bars under certain conditions. If your Pine code does not explicitly provide for handling these special cases, they can introduce invalid results in your script’s calculations which can ripple through all the way to the realtime bar. The na and nz functions are designed to allow for handling such cases.

Note 1. Almost all built-in functions in Pine’s standard library return a series result. It is therefore possible to apply the [] operator directly to function calls, as is done here:

sma(close, 10)[1]

Note 2. Despite the fact that the [] operator returns a result of series type, it is prohibited to apply this operator to the same operand over and over again. Here is an example of incorrect use which will generate a compilation error:

close[1][2] // Error: incorrect use of [] operator

In some situations, the user may want to shift the series to the left. Negative arguments for the operator [] are prohibited. This can be accomplished using the offset parameter in the plot annotation, which supports both positive and negative values. Note though that it is a visual shift., i.e., it will be applied after all calculations. Further details on plot and its parameters can be found here.

Operator precedence

The order of calculations is determined by the operators’ precedence. Operators with greater precedence are calculated first. Below is a list of operators sorted by decreasing precedence:

Precedence	Operator
9	[]
8	unary +, unary -, not
7	*, %
6	+, -
5	>, <, >=, <=
4	==, !=
3	and
2	or
1	?:

If in one expression there are several operators with the same precedence, then they are calculated left to right.

If the expression must be calculated in a different order than precedence would dictate, then parts of the expression can be grouped together with parentheses.