Raising a negative value to a fraction power?

I am rasing a negative value to a fraction power. Depending on how I write the operation (putting the negative value in parenthesis or not), the answer changes (see below)? Am I missing something?

Answer 1

[Alan Stevens]

Exponentiation has a higher priority than negation, so -2^1.2 is -(2^1.2), this results in a negative real. On the other had (-2)^1.2 raises a negative number to a fractional power, because parentheses take priority over exponentiation, and the result is a complex number.

[Ahmed]

Thanks alot. Yes, I was missing this MATLAB operator precedence rules when parenthesis are involved.