Course Content
Java Basics
Java Basics
If-Else Statement
Comparison Operators
To start, let's understand what comparison operators are.
The following are comparison operators: >, <, >=, <=, ==, !=.
Let's quickly go through what each of them does:
>
(greater than) compares if the value on the left is greater than the value on the right;<
(less than) compares if the value on the left is less than the value on the right;>=
(greater than or equal to) compares if the value on the left is greater than or equal to the value on the right;<=
(less than or equal to) compares if the value on the left is less than or equal to the value on the right;==
(equal to) compares if the values on both sides are equal;!=
(not equal to) compares if the values on both sides are not equal.
These operators are used to compare values and return a boolean result (true
or false
) based on the comparison.
If Statement
The if
statement is an essential part of any program. With the if
statement, you can set conditions for your program. The syntax and the diagram of the if
statement look like this:
Main
if (condition) { // code to be executed if it passes the condition } else { // code to be executed if it don't pass the condition }
Below is a flowchart showing the use of an if
statement. Before entering the if
block, we check the condition. If the condition evaluates to true
, we enter the if
block and perform the necessary operations. If the condition evaluates to false
, we skip the if
block and continue with the code.
Note
By the way, the fact that all the code is organized and executed in blocks is called structuring. It's precisely because Java is a strictly structured programming language that it is quite popular.
Let's look at an example with real values:
Main
package com.example; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { //you can change the values of variables a and b to test the if statement double a = 13.71; double b = 14.01; if (b > a) { System.out. println("b is greater than a"); } if (a > b) { System.out. println("a is greater than b"); } } }
In this code, we establish a condition. If the value of a
is greater than that of b
, we display information about it. If the value of b
exceeds a
, we display different information about it.
But it doesn't look elegant when we have two separate if statements. We have a dedicated syntax for situations like this called the if-else statement.
Let's see how we can improve the code above using the if-else statement
:
Main
package com.example; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { //you can change the values of variables a and b to test the if statement double a = 13.71; double b = 14.01; if (b > a) { System.out.println("b is greater than a"); } else { System.out.println("a is greater than or equal to b"); } } }
We can see how we improved our previous code using the if-else statement.
In simple terms, we check if the value of variable b
is greater, and if the returned value is false
, we enter the else
block, where we display a different message.
Here is the block scheme of If-Else
Statement:
Note
It's also worth noting that a boolean value should be stored inside the parentheses after the if-else statement. We can write it as boolean
bool = b > a;
In this case, the variable bool will hold the valuetrue
.
Let's examine a code fragment where we compare the values of two variables for equality:
Main
package com.example; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { //you can change the values of variables a and b to test the if statement int a = 10; int b = 10; if (a == b) { System.out.println("a equals b"); } else { System.out.println("a is not equal to b"); } } }
Here, we are checking if the values of a
and b
are equal and displaying information about it. Since both a
and b
have a value of 10, the result will be true
, so we display the corresponding message.
else-if chain
It is worth mentioning another statement called the else-if
statement.
When we need to specify multiple different execution conditions, we can use the following syntax:
Main
package com.example; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { //you can change the values of variables "a" and test the if-else statement int a = 25; int b = 13; if (a > b) { System.out.println("a is greater than b"); } else if (a == b) { System.out.println("a equals b"); } else { System.out.println("b is greater than a"); } } }
In the code above, we can see that multiple different conditions are used. Thus, it follows a simple algorithmic chain. If the first condition is false
, check the second one, and so on. We continue doing this until we get true
, or if all conditions return false
, we enter the familiar else
block.
Thanks for your feedback!