Dictionary.net

The property of an operator that says whethera sequence of three or more expressions combined by theoperator will be evaluated from left to right (leftassociative) or right to left (right associative). Forexample, in Perl, the lazy and operator && is leftassociative so in the expression: $i >= 0 && $x[$i] >= 0 && $y[$x[$i]] == 0the left-most && is evaluated first, whereas = is rightassociative, so in $a = $b = 42the right-most assignment is performed first.