Logical Operators
The bitwise operators are all useful in their place, but far more often you just want a simple Boolean and or or operator that converts its operands to Boolean values rather than integers.
These operators (called logical operators to distinguish them from the bitwise operators) also perform short-circuit evaluation. This means that they evaluate their left operand first, and if that is enough to tell the final result, the right operand isn’t evaluated.
Logical and is represented by
&&
. It evaluates its left operand
first: if this converts to Boolean false, the
result of the operation is false. If the left
operand can’t be converted to a Boolean, the result of the
operation is invalid. In both cases, the right
operand isn’t evaluated at all. If, however, the left operand
converts to Boolean true, the result of the
operation is the right operand, converted to a Boolean value.
Logical or is represented by
||
. It
evaluates its left operand first. If this converts to Boolean
true, the result of the operation is also
true. Just like logical and,
if the left operand can’t be converted, the result of the
operation is invalid. Also like the logical
and operation, in both cases the right operand
isn’t evaluated at all. If the left operand converts to Boolean
false, however, the result of the operation is the
right operand, also converted to a Boolean value.
For example:
(1+1 == 2) || foo( ) gives true, with no call to foo( )
|
(1+1 == 3) || foo( ) gives the result of foo( ... |
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