Operators available for writing MDL expressions are listed in Table 3.4. Operators with the same precedence are listed with equal priority numbers. Operators with higher priority numbers have higher precedence than operators with lower ones.
The syntax and precedence of the expressions is independent from the actual type of the involved values. For the built-in types the grammar rules are fully compatible to the corresponding rules of the ANSI C++ standard [1].
In this table expr is an expression resulting in an MDL value of the required type. Two different flavors of MDL values can be distinguished: MDL values which can be altered by operators, such as parameters, or the results of the preincrement or predecrement operators will be denoted as lval_expr. Values which can not be altered or assigned to, for instance the result of the binary + operator, will be labeled as rval_expr. An expr can be either an lval_expr or an rval_expr. name denotes the name of a certain parameter and instance is the instance name of an MDL class object.
| Operator | Result | Syntax | Priority |
| interface scope | lval_expr | :name | 16 |
| global scope | lval_expr | ::name | 16 |
| member selection | lval_expr | instance.name | 15 |
| function call | rval_expr | expr (expr), expr (expr, expr) | 15 |
| array subscripting | lval_expr | expr [ expr ] | 14 |
| post increment | lval_expr | expr ++ | 14 |
| post decrement | lval_expr | expr - | 14 |
| preincrement | lval_expr | ++ lval_expr | 13 |
| predecrement | lval_expr | - lval_expr | 13 |
| unary minus | lval_expr | - expr | 13 |
| unary plus | lval_expr | + expr | 13 |
| not | lval_expr | ! lval_expr | 12 |
| multiply | rval_expr | expr * expr | 11 |
| divide | rval_expr | expr / expr | 11 |
| modulo (remainder) | rval_expr | expr % expr | 11 |
| add | rval_expr | expr + expr | 10 |
| subtract | rval_expr | expr - expr | 10 |
| shift left | rval_expr | expr << expr | 9 |
| shift right | rval_expr | expr >> expr | 9 |
| less than | rval_expr | expr < expr | 8 |
| less than or equal | rval_expr | expr <= expr | 8 |
| greater than | rval_expr | expr > expr | 8 |
| greater than or equal | rval_expr | expr >= expr | 8 |
| equal | rval_expr | expr == expr | 7 |
| not equal | rval_expr | expr != expr | 7 |
| bitwise AND | rval_expr | expr & expr | 6 |
| bitwise exclusive OR | rval_expr | expr 
expr |
5 |
| bitwise inclusive OR | rval_expr | expr | expr | 4 |
| logical AND | rval_expr | expr && expr | 3 |
| logical inclusive OR | rval_expr | expr || expr | 2 |
| simple assignment | lval_expr | expr = expr | 1 |
| multiply and assign | lval_expr | expr *= expr | 1 |
| divide and assign | lval_expr | expr /= expr | 1 |
| remainder and assign | lval_expr | expr %= expr | 1 |
| add and assign | lval_expr | expr += expr | 1 |
| subtract and assign | lval_expr | expr -= expr | 1 |
| shift left and assign | lval_expr | expr <<= expr | 1 |
| shift right and assign | lval_expr | expr >>= expr | 1 |
| AND and assign | lval_expr | expr &= expr | 1 |
| inclusive OR and assign | lval_expr | expr |= expr | 1 |
| exclusive OR and assign | lval_expr | expr = expr |
1 |