# UnitRange behavior
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [November 23, 2018, 12:09am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887 "2018-11-23T00:09:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:09am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/1 "2018-11-23T00:09:13Z")
Can’t be right, right?
```julia
julia> 1.0:5 .- 0.5
1.0:1.0:4.0
julia> collect(1.0:5) .- 0.5
5-element Array{Float64,1}:
0.5
1.5
2.5
3.5
4.5
```
---
### Author:  [@yurivish](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/yurivish)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/2 "2018-11-23T00:19:41Z")
Try adding parentheses around the range in the first example — it’s a precedence thing.
---
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:29am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/3 "2018-11-23T00:29:32Z")
Yes, that’s it but quite unexpected, at least to me.
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### Author:  [@Seif\_Shebl](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Seif_Shebl)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/4 "2018-11-23T00:34:01Z")
If you’re coming from MATLAB, e.g., this is the very expected thing!
---
### Author:  [@yurivish](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/yurivish)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/5 "2018-11-23T00:35:53Z")
Agreed. I’ve been caught on it too. That’s how I knew 🙂
---
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/6 "2018-11-23T00:42:55Z")
I must confess. I have many years of Matlab and, damn it, I had never noticed that. Who knows why, probably there I never missed the parentheses but here in Julia I was expecting a different thing.
---
### Author:  [@rdeits](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rdeits)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 2:11am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/7 "2018-11-23T02:11:27Z")
Yeah, I generally end up adding parentheses for complicated ranges because the precedence isn’t always obvious.
On the other hand, the current behavior allows you to do:
```julia
for i in 1:N-1
...
end
```
which feels pretty natural.
---
### Author:  [@StefanKarpinski](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/StefanKarpinski)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 3:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/8 "2018-11-23T03:21:07Z")
Presumably you’ve written `1:n-1` or `a+1:n`?
---
### Author:  [@simonbyrne](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/simonbyrne)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 3:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/9 "2018-11-23T03:55:32Z")
I like the Fortress idea where whitespace which is inconsistent with precedence is a syntax error: this would have caught the original example here.
See also [Non-transitive operator precedence · Issue #18714 · JuliaLang/julia · GitHub](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/18714)
---
### Author:  [@StefanKarpinski](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/StefanKarpinski)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 4:06am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/10 "2018-11-23T04:06:28Z")
Yes, I really like that too. It would be breaking though so it would have to be opt-in or wait until 2.0.
---
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2018, 10:09am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/unitrange-behavior/17887/11 "2018-11-23T10:09:18Z")
> [@StefanKarpinski](#):
>
> Presumably you’ve written `1:n-1` or `a+1:n` ?
No. I can’t reconstruct it anymore but it involved something like this
```julia
julia> x=1:5;
julia> x - 0.5
┌ Warning: `a::AbstractArray - b::Number` is deprecated, use `a .- b` instead.
│ caller = top-level scope at none:0
└ @ Core none:0
0.5:1.0:4.5
```
which fixed in my head the array array side of this and then later using `1:5 .- 0.5` and being surprised that the results were different. Being late at night might had influenced too.