The old form of compound assignment operators (such as =+, =-, =*, =/, and =%) are not defined in the Standard.[1] Therefore, in expressions of the form expression =unary_op expression, where the =unary_op would previously have been interpreted as an assignment operator, the =unary_op is now interpreted as two tokens: the assignment operator and the unary_op.
A warning message is issued if the error-checking option is specified for =-, =*, =& and =+ (with no intervening white space) to remind you of this change in meaning. Without the error-checking option, no message is issued.
[1] Early versions of C allowed compound assignment operators to be written in reverse form (=+, =-, = *) instead of the defined order (+=, -=, *=). This old form leads to syntactic ambiguities for the compound assignment operators whose second operator was also a valid unary operator.