Removing associativity for unary ops is definitely an improvement. Most people don't understand and don't need to understand why YACC/BISON/Lemon care about associativity for unary ops. It simply doesn't apply in the context of normal expressions grammars, there is no possible ambiguity. I could make up an LALR(1) grammar where it matters but you would say that grammar is apropos of nothing and those issues don't apply to normal expressions. And you'd be right. My best argument to remove goes like this: If the associativity was there people might actually think about it, thinking that it matters before finally convincing themselves that it doesn't. The *best* we can hope for by including it is that they won't waste too much time thinking about it. That's a case for deletion if I ever heard one :D [edit] Note: ALL SQLite binary ops are left to right associative (because there is no assignment operator) so you could use that as a reason to not mention it at all except in a footnote...