Conditionals in C

Conditionals

This Chapter deals with the various methods that C can control the flow of logic in a program. Apart from slight syntactic variation they are similar to other languages.

As we have seen following logical operations exist in C:

==, !=, $\parallel$, &&.

One other operator is the unitary - it takes only one argument - not !.

These operators are used in conjunction with the following statements.

The if statement

The if statement has the same function as other languages. It has three basic forms:


if (expression)
statement

...or:


if (expression)
statement1
else
statement2

...or:


if (expression)
statement1
else if (expression)
statement2
else
statement3

For example:-


int x,y,w;

main()
{

if (x>0)
{
z=w;
........
}
else
{
z=y;
........
}

}

The ? operator

The ? (ternary condition) operator is a more efficient form for expressing simple if statements. It has the following form:

expression1 ? expression2: expression3

It simply states:

if expression1 then expression2 else expression3

For example to assign the maximum of a and b to z:


z = (a>b) ? a : b;

which is the same as:


if (a>b)
z = a;
else
z=b;

The switch statement

The C switch is similar to Pascal's case statement and it allows multiple choice of a selection of items at one level of a conditional where it is a far neater way of writing multiple if statements:


switch (expression) {
case item1:
statement1;
break;
case item2:
statement2;
break;
$\vdots$ $\vdots$ case itemn:
statementn;
break;
default:
statement;
break;
}

In each case the value of itemi must be a constant, variables are not allowed.

The break is needed if you want to terminate the switch after execution of one choice. Otherwise the next case would get evaluated. Note: This is unlike most other languages.

We can also have null statements by just including a ; or let the switch statement fall through by omitting any statements (see e.g. below).

The default case is optional and catches any other cases.

For example:-


switch (letter)
{
case `A':
case `E':
case `I':
case `O':
case `U':
numberofvowels++;
break;

case ` ':
numberofspaces++;
break;

default:
numberofconstants++;
break;
}

In the above example if the value of letter is `A', `E', `I', `O' or `U' then numberofvowels is incremented.

If the value of letter is ` ' then numberofspaces is incremented.

If none of these is true then the default condition is executed, that is numberofconstants is incremented.