Parens are a sign of either a complex statement OR insufficient strength in the grammar.

Now there's a false dilemma. Unless you enforce a strict left-to-right evaluation order like Smalltalk, you have to choose how to break ties between different operators at different precedence levels. Even when you have operators at the same precedence level, you have to decide which executes first, depending on associativity and arity and the like.

Without a single hard and fast expression evaluation order enforced by the grammar, you're going to have to make tradeoffs. Parentheses are also a sign that these tradeoffs aren't always right in every case.

In reply to Re^7: Precedence design question...'x' & arith by chromatic
in thread Precedence design question...'x' & arith by perl-diddler

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