Chapter 4 – Conditional Control Structures

(Updated February 10, 2025)

Table of contents

Relational Operators
One-way and two-way selection
Compound Statements
Multi-way selection
The Dangling else
Logical Operators
Comparing Strings
The switch Statement
Short-circuit Evaluation
The ternary operator ?:
Quiz
Exercises

Relational Operators

Up to this point, our statements have been executing sequentially; they have been processed in order without any of the sequence changing. The program will execute statements in the order they are written. However, there are times that we would like to execute statements conditionally rather than unconditionally.

Statements can be executed in three ways:

• Sequential (unconditional)
• Conditional (selective or branch)
• Iterative (looping)

Programs may contain all three forms of statement execution but, as we have seen, are not required to do anything more than sequential. Iterative statements will be covered in the next chapter. This chapter will concentrate on the conditional execution of our programs.

When deciding what should be done when a condition is met, we must first determine the condition to be detected. In other words, what condition must be met, and how will we know when that condition or event has occurred? Some examples are:

if 18 is evenly divisible by 2
    then print "the number is even"

if ­8 is less than 0
    then print "the number is negative"

if the Sun is shining
    note that it is daytime
otherwise
    note that is is NOT daytime

Examples of conditional statements in English.

Of course, none of these are actual Java statements. These statements are known as pseudocode. Pseudocode is used to describe the details of a piece of logic that is yet to be written. The beauty of pseudocode is that we can express anything we like without writing in a specific language. Therefore, pseudocode assists in conceptualizing ideas while remaining language neutral.

Determining if a condition has been met often requires comparing a particular value with some known quantity. To make these comparisons, we will need a set of tools that perform the comparison work and give a yes or no result, or more to the point, a true or false result. The collection of Java relational operators gives us a true or false result based on comparisons. There are six relational operators, and they are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Relational operators for comparison.

As we will see, the relational operators are binary, just like our arithmetic operators. The operators can involve integral and floating-point primitive data types. Only equal to (==) and not equal to (!=) may be applied when comparing the boolean primitive data type variables.

It would be best to be cautious when testing floating-point values for equality. A loss of precision is possible when these numbers are stored in memory and is more likely to occur when they are involved in complex arithmetic expressions.

One-way and two-way selection

Let us take the first two examples from above and rewrite them in actual Java code. The first two examples demonstrate the concept of one-way selection; there is only one possible outcome based on the test being performed. The rewrite is shown below.

if ( 18 % 2 == 0 )
    System.out.println("The number is even.");

if ( ­8 < 0 )
    System.out.println("The number is negative.");

Examples of conditional statements in Java.

These examples show a conditional test that must be satisfied before performing the indented portion of code. The line below the if test is indented to show that the code will only be executed if the test evaluates to true. Parentheses always surround the condition test itself.

It is now established that statements will be executed if conditions are true. The third example, however, shows an opportunity where work may need to be done when the condition is true or alternate work done when the condition is false – a two-way selection. Example 1 shows a complete program for the third example. The original pseudocode that has been converted is highlighted.

public class DayOrNight {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        boolean daytime, sunShining;

        sunShining = true;

        // basic condition test
        if ( sunShining == true )
            daytime = true;
        else
            daytime = false;

        System.out.println("sunShining = " + sunShining);
        System.out.println("daytime = " + daytime);
    }
}

Example 1: Program demonstrating the else clause of the if statement.

The program output is as expected:

sunShining = true 
daytime = true 

It was easy to predict the output without knowing what the else clause would do for our program. Since sunShining was true, we would expect the value of daytime to be set to true. The else clause of the if statement allows the programmer to offer an alternative if the condition test fails to evaluate to true. Therefore, if the condition test failed, the statement indented beneath the else clause would be executed setting daytime to false.

The else portion of an if is matched with the closest unfinished if, that is, one that has no else portion.

Compound Statements

Let us change our DayOrNight class and add another boolean variable, nighttime. The product is Example 2. In this example, we can see that two assignment statements will be executed for both the true and false portion of our if/else construct.

The if portion and the else portion, by default, can only have one statement associated with each. When we need either of them to perform more than one statement worth of work, we use a compound statement. A compound statement is formed like our main method body was formed – with curly braces. Note the closing of the curly braces before the else portion begins.

As we will see in upcoming sections and future chapters, the compound statement is used by many constructs.

public class DayOrNight2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        boolean daytime, nighttime, sunShining;

        sunShining = true;

        // if test with compound statement.
        if ( sunShining == true ) {
            daytime = true;
            nighttime = false;
        } else {
            daytime = false;
            nighttime = true;
        }

        System.out.println("sunShining = " + sunShining);
        System.out.println("daytime = " + daytime);
        System.out.println("nighttime = " + nighttime);
    }
}

Example 2: Two-­way selection with a compound statement.

Multi-way selection

Multi-way selection is often needed when the data tested falls into more than two response categories. Consider the code in Example 3 and Example 4 where we want to test if a number is positive, negative or zero. Clearly, a single else is not enough, but we also cannot have more than one else per if statement. The concept of a nested if can be applied to allow a test with more than two options.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class NumType {

    static Scanner kb = new Scanner(System.in);
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int x;

        System.out.print("Enter an integer: ");
        x = kb.nextInt();

        System.out.print("The value " + x + " is ");
        // multi-way if test with "else if".
        if ( x < 0 )
            System.out.println("Negative.");
        else if ( x > 0 )
            System.out.println("Positive.");
        else
            System.out.println("Zero.");
    }
}

Example 3: Multi-way if statement.

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

public class NumTypeGUI {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int x;
        String s;
        s = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter an integer:");
        x = Integer.parseInt(s);

        s = "The number " + x + " is ";
        // multi-way if test with "else if".
        if ( x < 0 )
            s = s + "Negative.";
        else if ( x > 0 )
            s = s + "Positive.";
        else
            s = s + "Zero.";

        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, s, "Results",
                JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
    }
}

Example 4: Multi-way if statement with dialog boxes.

Technically speaking, a nested if actually looks like:

if ( x < 0 ) 
    System.out.println("Negative."); 
else
    if ( x > 0 ) 
        System.out.println("Positive."); 
    else 
        System.out.println("Zero."); 

The Example 3 format is preferred for ease of writing and is accepted conventional structure in several programming languages.

The Dangling else

Consider a multi-way selection where there is an else portion for the outer condition, but not for the inner one. Here is a piece of code to demonstrate:

if ( age >= 18 ) 
    if ( age >= 21 ) 
        System.out.println("Legal Drinking Age."); 
else
    System.out.println("Ineligible To Vote.");

The issue is that although the indentation shows the else belongs to the test of age >= 18, Java (and other languages) associates the else with the closest unfinished if. As a result, the else actually belongs to the test for legal drinking age. Those who are ages 18 to 20 are therefore ineligible to vote! This clearly needs fixing and can be done with a simple compound statement to correctly associate the else as shown below:

if ( age >= 18 ) { 
    if ( age >= 21 ) 
        System.out.println("Legal Drinking Age."); 
} else
    System.out.println("Ineligible to vote.");

Logical Operators

The set of logical operators allows one to join logical expressions into larger ones. The logical
operators are listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Logical operators.

The ! (not) unary operator inverts the boolean value. Therefore !true is false and !false is true.

The binary operators && (and) and || (or) work according to standard boolean algebra, where the result of && is only true if both operands are true. Likewise, || is only false when both operands are false. A standard truth table is shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Truth table showing && and ||.

The char type can be used with relational operators since it is an integer primitive type, so let us add some characters to our selection examples. Here are a few:

char ch;

//...

if ( ch >= '0' && ch <= '9' ) 
    System.out.println("The character is a digit."); 

if ( ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z' ) 
    System.out.println("The character is an uppercase letter.");

if ( (ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z') || (ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'z') ) 
    System.out.println("The character is a letter.");

if ( (ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'Z') || (ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'z') || (ch >= '0' && ch <= '9') ) 
    System.out.println("The character is a alphanumeric.");

The first two selection statements show simple determination of digit (in the range '0' through '9') or uppercase letter (in the range 'A' through 'Z').

The third one joins the concept of letters being upper or lowercase. Note the use of parentheses to separate the uppercase test from the lowercase test. Also, see that or was used to join the two tests since a character can't be both uppercase and lowercase.

Our final example takes on the more generalized classification of an alphanumeric character: the character is uppercase, lowercase or numeric.

Comparing Strings

Comparing strings is quite simple once you understand lexicographical analysis principles. A lexicographical analysis is a character-by-character comparison of two strings using the Unicode collating sequence until we either:

• Run out of characters in one of the strings.
• Two characters in the same position of the two strings are different.
• Both strings have been tested and no mismatches were found.

In other words, if the strings are of different lengths, they cannot be a match. If two characters from the same position, say position 12, in each string, are different, they cannot be a match.

Otherwise, they are a perfect match, and we say the strings are equal.

The compareTo() method of the String class returns three possible values as a result of this character by character comparison. This is shown in Table 4 and it is assumed that str1 and str2 are valid String reference variables.

Table 4: Possible results for the compareTo() String method.

Why does the compareTo() method return these values? One way to look at this is to realize that the values are the same when subtracting one value from another if the result is zero. So, given two strings of equal length, if the difference of the last character of each string is zero, then the two strings match since to reach the last character of the strings, they must have matched all along.

Now consider when two characters do not match. If we take the characters from each string at the same position and subtract the Unicode value of the str2 character from the Unicode value of the str1 character, there will be either a positive or negative result. If the result is negative, then the Unicode value from str1 was less than the Unicode value from str2. That single character comparison is all that was needed to determine that str1 is less than str2.

Consider the code in Example 5. This is an insight into the use of equals() and compareTo() methods.

public class ConditionalStrings {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String r, s, t, u, v;

        r = "AAA";
        s = "AAA";
        t = "AAD";
        u = "AAADK";
        v = "FD";

        // a series of compareTo() calls to see how the Strings line up.
        System.out.println("r and s are lexicograhically equal.");
        System.out.println("r.compareTo(s) = " + r.compareTo(s));

        System.out.println("\nr is less than u based on length. (\"AAA\" matches the prefix).");
        System.out.println("r.compareTo(u) = " + r.compareTo(u));

        System.out.println("\nv is greater than t because 'F' - 'A' = 5. (Length is irrelevant here.)");
        System.out.println("v.compareTo(t) = " + v.compareTo(t));

        System.out.println("\ns is less than t because 'A' - 'D' = -3.");
        System.out.println("s.compareTo(t) = " + s.compareTo(t));

        System.out.println("\nt is greater than s because 'D' - 'A' = 3.");
        System.out.println("t.compareTo(s) = " + t.compareTo(s));

        /** Note that we are comparing the references!
         * This is the same as using equals() from
         * Object (the class from which all classes are
         * derived).
         */

        System.out.println("\nr and s are equal based on ==.");
        System.out.println("r == s is " + (r == s));

        System.out.println("\nr and s are equal based on equals().");
        System.out.println("r.equals(s) is " + r.equals(s));
    }
}

Example 5: Many forms of String comparison.

Below is another table of some String methods that perform various comparisons and also some additional forms of manipulation, such as trimming whitespace and replacing characters or Strings.

Table 5: Some additional String methods.

The switch Statement

The multi-way selection of if-else-if-else-if-else is very reliable. Another method for accomplishing a similar task exists – the switch statement. First, let's review the multi-way if selection using an integer month to reflect the month of the year.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class MonthIfElse {

    static Scanner kb = new Scanner(System.in);

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int month;
        String monthStr;

        // get month selection as a number.
        System.out.print("Enter the month (1-12): ");
        month = kb.nextInt();

        // large multi-way test to get String.
        if ( month == 1 )
            monthStr = "January";
        else if ( month == 2 )
            monthStr = "February";
        else if ( month == 3 )
            monthStr = "March";
        else if ( month == 4 )
            monthStr = "April";
        else if ( month == 5 )
            monthStr = "May";
        else if ( month == 6 )
            monthStr = "June";
        else if ( month == 7 )
            monthStr = "July";
        else if ( month == 8 )
            monthStr = "August";
        else if ( month == 9 )
            monthStr = "September";
        else if ( month == 10 )
            monthStr = "October";
        else if ( month == 11 )
            monthStr = "November";
        else if ( month == 12 )
            monthStr = "December";
        else
            monthStr = "AN UNKNOWN MONTH";

        System.out.println("The month selected is " + monthStr);
    }
}

Example 6: Recap of the if­-else multi­-way selector.

As you can see in Example 6, the integer is used to determine the string value for the month. This approach can be rewritten using a switch statement as in Example 7.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class MonthSelect {

    static Scanner kb = new Scanner(System.in);
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int month;
        String monthStr;

        System.out.print("Enter the month (1-12): ");
        month = kb.nextInt();

        switch ( month ) {
            case 1: monthStr = "January"; break;
            case 2: monthStr = "February"; break;
            case 3: monthStr = "March"; break;
            case 4: monthStr = "April"; break;
            case 5: monthStr = "May"; break;
            case 6: monthStr = "June"; break;
            case 7: monthStr = "July"; break;
            case 8: monthStr = "August"; break;
            case 9: monthStr = "September"; break;
            case 10: monthStr = "October"; break;
            case 11: monthStr = "November"; break;
            case 12: monthStr = "December"; break;
            default: monthStr = "AN UNKNOWN MONTH"; break;
        }

        System.out.println("The month selected is " + monthStr);
    }
}

Example 7: Multi­-way selection using a switch statement.

The switch statement uses a parenthesized integer expression or selector. In this example, the selector is simply month. The switch statement compares the selector value to the list of possible action cases. The selector value and the following list of cases must be an integer. Each case represents a selection or path to be taken based on the value of the selector. In addition, all cases have a particular value to be matched, followed by a colon.

The optional default case is used to catch selector values that have not matched any other cases.

All statements that follow the colon immediately after a matched case are executed and are not enclosed in curly braces as you would expect a compound statement would typically be. Instead of encasing the statement block in curly braces, a break statement is used to signify both the end of the block and to leave the switch statement. If a break statement is absent, execution will continue through the next case.

In Java 7, the ability to switch on a String was added. So, if we needed to go the other way, meaning convert a String to an int, we could use the following.

import java.util.Scanner;

public class MonthSelectString {

    static Scanner kb = new Scanner(System.in);
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int month;
        String monthStr;

        System.out.print("Enter a month: ");
        // note the chaining of methods to get a word
        // and convert to upper case at the same time.
        monthStr = kb.next().toUpperCase();

        switch ( monthStr ) {
            case "JANUARY": month = 1; break;
            case "FEBRUARY": month = 2; break;
            case "MARCH": month = 3; break;
            case "APRIL": month = 4; break;
            case "MAY": month = 5; break;
            case "JUNE": month = 6; break;
            case "JULY": month = 7; break;
            case "AUGUST": month = 8; break;
            case "SEPTEMBER": month = 9; break;
            case "OCTOBER": month = 10; break;
            case "NOVEMBER": month = 11; break;
            case "DECEMBER": month = 12; break;
            default: month = 0; break;
        }

        System.out.println("The month selected is " + monthStr);
    }
}

Example 8: Multi­-way selection using a switch and strings.

Leaving a break statement out could be accidental or intentional. The unintentional omission of the break statement would result in code that is logically incorrect in one or more cases of the switch statement. However, the intentional omission of the break statement combines cases where appropriate, which can help simplify the code.

With the enhanced switch now available in Java 14, we will provide an example of how this can benefit programmers.

Consider the clumsy, verbose standard example with variables letterGrade as a char and qp as an int, which determines the quality points as a step in calculating the cumulative average.

switch (letterGrade) { 
    case 'a': 
    case 'A': 
        qp = 4; 
        break; 
    case 'b': 
    case 'B': 
        qp = 3; 
        break; 
    case 'c': 
    case 'C': 
        qp = 2; 
        break; 
    case 'd': 
    case 'D': 
        qp = 1; 
        break; 
    default: 
        qp = 0; 
        break; 
}

This code can also be written as follows, but it is still a formatted mess.

switch (letterGrade) { 
    case 'a': case 'A': qp = 4; break; 
    case 'b': case 'B': qp = 3; break; 
    case 'c': case 'C': qp = 2; break; 
    case 'd': case 'D': qp = 1; break; 
    default: qp = 0; break; 
}

As you can see, the format is rather loose with the whitespace, and the reformatting helps a little. But we can still improve it. We will swap the colon for an arrow (->), combine cases using commas, and eliminate the break, which is now implied.

switch (letterGrade) { 
    case 'a', 'A' -> qp = 4; 
    case 'b', 'B' -> qp = 3;
    case 'c', 'C' -> qp = 2; 
    case 'd', 'D' -> qp = 1; 
    default       -> qp = 0;
}

Finally, consider the switch as an expression below. Note the semicolon at the end of the switch since this is now an assignment statement involving qp.

int qp = switch (letterGrade) { 
	case 'a', 'A' -> 4; 
	case 'b', 'B' -> 3;
	case 'c', 'C' -> 2; 
	case 'd', 'D' -> 1; 
	default       -> 0;
};  // <- additional semicolon

If there was an opportunity to provide an error message but not interrupt the flow, we could use yield and a code block. Remember that for each case in a switch expression, all labels must provide a value.

int qp = switch (letterGrade) { 
	case 'a', 'A' -> 4;
	case 'b', 'B' -> 3;
	case 'c', 'C' -> 2;
	case 'd', 'D' -> 1;
	case 'F', 'f' -> 0;
	default       -> {
		System.err.println("UNKNOWN GRADE ENCOUNTERED! " + letterGrade);
		yield 0;
	}
};

After all of this, the only remaining question is when do you choose if-else over switch? Consider the earlier code example where we identified a character as alphanumeric for a possible answer to that question. With 52 letters and ten digits, one would unlikely choose switch.

In other words, if there is an extensive range of values or the condition test is not a simple comparison, it is probably better suited to an if construct. If there are only a few values, it is possible either would work, and one version may require more code. It's up to the programmer which is the better choice and could be easily modified to accommodate future changes.

Short-circuit Evaluation

Java offers a fail-early or pass-early model of evaluation called short circuit evaluation with the logical operators && and ||. The details of how it works are shown below.

How does it work?

To use the electrical term, a short circuit is precisely what it implies - a connection with a low-resistance conductor. In other words, there is nothing to resist the circuit, and there will be a delivery of a large amount of energy in a short period - this is a bad thing, electrically speaking.

From a coding perspective, the same is true - because there is low resistance in our ability to determine the outcome of a condition. The difference here is that we can use less energy because of the predictive nature of truth tables.

Consider the following truth table.

Table 5: Truth table showing && and ||.

Table 5 is the same Table 3 with a few rows highlighted. The specific details of interest have to do with the left operand.

With AND (&&) if either side of the expression is false, then the answer is false.

Therefore: With AND (&&) when the left operand is false, the entire expression is false.

With OR (||) if either side of the expression is true, then the answer is true.

Therefore: With OR (||) when the left operand is true, the entire expression is true.

In each of these circumstances, it does not matter what the truth value of the right operand happens to be. No one cares - including the compiler! After your program compiles, the resultant code is such that when the left side is false for AND (&&) and the left side is true for OR (||), the right side of the expression is ignored since it is insignificant.

In other words, the result is already well-known, and we have short-circuited our way to the answer.

The ternary operator ?:

A ternary operator is a clever tool that has its origins back in the early C programming language. It offers a means to make an if-else a bit more elegant.

Consider the following classic min/max example.

int x, y;
int min, max;

if ( x < y ) {
    min = x;
    max = y;
} else {
    min = y;
    max = x;
}

Although this code does what we expect, it is wordy. In its most powerful form, the ternary operator allows us to make decisions on the right-hand side of an assignment operator. It is most often written in the form:

resultVar = condition ? trueResult : falseResult;

The variable resultVar will have the trueResult value assigned if the condition is true. Otherwise, it will have the falseResult assigned. The previous example can be simplified to the following.

min = ( x < y ) ? x : y;
max = ( x > y ) ? x : y;

Another helpful example is the plural solution. Consider this bit of code.

if ( guesses > 1 )
    response = "You have " + guesses + " guesses remaining."
else
    response = "You have 1 guess remaining."

While this scenario is not overly complicated, it lends itself to the ternary operator's opportunity.

response = "You have " + guesses + ( guesses > 1 ? " guesses " : " guess " ) + "remaining.";

The decision to use the ternary operator is often a personal one. It is generally chosen to simplify bits of code, as demonstrated above.

Quiz

The conditional test for an if statement

 must be constructed of only relational operators.

 must evaluate to either 1 or 0.

 may contain any operators, but must evaluate to boolean.

 may contain any operators, but must evaluate to int.

Given:

s = "apple orange lemon lime grapefruit";

Which of the following will remove all of the spaces?

 s.replaceAll(" ", "");

 replace(' ', '');

 s.replace(' ', '');

 replaceAll(" ", "");

What is the output of the following:

int x = 1, y = 2, ans;

if (x <= 1) {
    if (y != x) {
        ans = 3;
    } else {
        ans = 5;
    }
} else {
    ans = 0;
}
System.out.printf ("%d%n", ans);

 1

 3

 5

 0

Multi-way if test involves

 an else clause.

 using a select statement and not if.

 an if followed by one or more else/if statements with an optional else.

 multiple sequential if tests.

The condition test of an if test must be enclosed in

 angle brackets

 curly brackets

 square brackets

 parentheses

Which of the following is a correctly written ternary operator test?

 

s = (numGuess > 1 ) ? "guesses" : "guess";

 

System.out.print((i & mask) == 0 ? 0 : 1);

 

min = ( x < y ) ? x : y;
max = ( x > y ) ? x : y;

 

x = (i & mask) == 0 ? 0 : 1;

Given:

String t, s;

s = "BAD";
t = "BAG";

Invoking t.compareTo(s) will return:

 3

 1

 -1

 0

A compound statement must be enclosed in

 parentheses

 angle brackets

 square brackets

 curly brackets

Given:

String r, s;
    
r = "ABC";
s = "ABC";

Invoking r.compareTo(s) will return:

 -1

 1

 0

 true

What is the output of the following:

int x = 1, y = 2, ans;

ans = (x >= 1 ? (y <= 2 ? 3 : 5) : 0);
System.out.printf ("%d%n", ans);

 0

 5

 3

 1

 Loading ...

Question 1 of 10

Exercises

1. (Beginner) Given a spell DC (difficulty class) of 16, generate a random number representing a d20 roll and add 2 to it (the constitution modifier). Write an if test to see if the roll meets or exceeds the DC representing success. Tell the user the DC, the roll, and their modifier. If the roll succeeds, tell them they avoided being poisoned; otherwise, indicate they are poisoned.
2. (Beginner) Write a switch statement to convert the String values of the days of the week "Sunday" through "Saturday" to the range 0 through 6.
3. (Intermediate) Convert the switch statement for letter grade to quality points conversion into a multi-way if test.
4. (Advanced) Read two strings from the user. Show them both strings and tell them which one is lexicographically greater than the other.
5. (Advanced) Perform the previous exercise using the ternary operator ?:.