INTERCAL doesn't specify precedence, but it also doesn't error on ambiguous precedence
An expression like "#1$#2~#3" is ambiguous, and could mean "'#1$#2'~#3" or "#1$'#2~#3'".
The INTERCAL spec leaves it intentionally unclear which is meant, and in general there's no standard (although C-INTERCAL and CLC-INTERCAL make an effort to match each other in the simpler cases). That said, the original isn't incorrect; it's ambiguous and I wouldn't advise using it in production code (but then, I wouldn't advise using INTERCAL itself in production code), but it will have some meaning in the majority of compilers.
In other words, it may be worth just removing grouping characters and hoping your program still works. Most interpreters will parse any given ambiguous expression consistently, so for each pair of grouping characters, there's a 1 in 2 chance it's unnecessary; that can add up to quite some savings. (Unfortunately, INTERCAL parsers tend to be sufficiently confusing that nobody's entirely sure what the rules actually are, but it can normally be determined by experiment. In the simplest cases, operators tend to all have equal precedence and to have a consistent associativity.)
