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Trail: Learning the Java Language
Lesson: Language Basics

## The if/else Statements

> Java's if statement provides your programs with the ability to selectively execute other statements based on some criteria. For example, suppose that your program printed debugging information based on the value of some boolean variable named `DEBUG`. If `DEBUG` were set to `true`, then your program would print debugging information such as the value of some variable like `x`. Otherwise, your program would proceed normally. A segment of code to implement this might look like this:

> >     if (DEBUG) {
> >         System.out.println("DEBUG: x = " + x);
> >     }

> This is the simplest version of the `if` statement: the statement governed by the `if` is executed if some condition is true. Generally, the simple form of `if` can be written like this:

> >     if (expression) {
> >         statement
> >     }

> What if you wanted to perform a different set of statements if the expression is false? You use the else statement for that. Consider another example. Suppose that your program needs to perform different actions depending on whether the user clicks on the OK button or the Cancel button in an alert window. Your program could do this using an `if` statement:

> >         . . .
> >         // response is either OK or CANCEL depending
> >         // on the button that the user pressed
> >         . . .
> >     if (response == OK) {
> >         . . .
> >         // code to perform OK action
> >         . . .
> >     } else {
> >         . . .
> >         // code to perform Cancel action
> >         . . .
> >     }

> The `else` block is executed if the `if` part is false. Another form of the `else` statement, `else if`, executes a statement based on another expression. An `if` statement can have any number of companion `else if` statements, but only one `else`. Following is a program, `IfElseDemo`, that assigns a grade based on the value of a test score: an A for a score of 90% or above, a B for a score of 80% or above, and so on:

> >     public class IfElseDemo {
> >         public static void main(String[] args) {

> >             int testscore = 76;
> >             char grade;

> >             if (testscore >= 90) {
> >                 grade = 'A';
> >             } else if (testscore >= 80) {
> >                 grade = 'B';
> >             } else if (testscore >= 70) {
> >                 grade = 'C';
> >             } else if (testscore >= 60) {
> >                 grade = 'D';
> >             } else {
> >                 grade = 'F';
> >             }
> >             System.out.println("Grade = " + grade);
> >         }
> >     }

> The output from this program is:

> >     Grade = C

> You may have noticed that some values of `testscore` could satisfy more than one of the expressions in the compound `if` statement. For instance, a score of 76 would evaluate to `true` for two of the expressions in the `if` statement: `testscore >= 70` and `testscore >= 60`. However, as the runtime system processes a compound `if` statement such as this one, once a condition is satisfied (76 >= 70), the appropriate statements are executed (`grade = 'C';`), and control passes out of the `if` statement without evaluating the remaining conditions.

> The Java programming language supports an operator, `?:`, that is a compact version an `if` statement. Recall this statement from the `MaxVariablesDemo` program:

> >     if (Character.isUpperCase(aChar)) {
> >         System.out.println("The character " + aChar + " is upper case.");
> >     } else {
> >         System.out.println("The character " + aChar + " is lower case.");
> >     }

> Here's how you could rewrite that statement using the ?: operator:

> >     System.out.println("The character " + aChar + " is " +
> >                        Character.isUpperCase(aChar) ? "upper" : "lower" +
> >                        "case.");

> The `?:` operator returns the string `"upper"` if the `isUpperCase` method returns true. Otherwise, it returns the string `"lower"`. The result is concatenated with other parts of a message to be displayed. Using `?:` makes sense here because the `if` statement is secondary to the call to the `println` method. Once you get used to this construct, it also makes the code easier to read.

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