C If ... Else
Conditions and If Statements
You have already learned that C supports the usual logical conditions from mathematics:
- Less than: a < b
- Less than or equal to: a <= b
- Greater than: a > b
- Greater than or equal to: a >= b
- Equal to a == b
- Not Equal to: a != b
You can use these conditions to perform different actions for different decisions.
C has the following conditional statements:
- Use
if
to specify a block of code to be executed, if a specified condition istrue
- Use
else
to specify a block of code to be executed, if the same condition isfalse
- Use
else if
to specify a new condition to test, if the first condition isfalse
- Use
switch
to specify many alternative blocks of code to be executed
The if Statement
Use the if
statement to specify a block of code to be executed if a condition is true
.
Syntax
if (condition) {
// block of code to be executed if the
condition is true
}
Note that if
is in lowercase letters. Uppercase letters (If or IF) will generate an error.
In the example below, we test two values to find out if 20 is greater than
18. If the condition is true
, print some text:
We can also test variables:
Example explained
In the example above we use two variables, x and y,
to test whether x is greater than y
(using the >
operator). As x is 20, and y is 18, and we know that 20 is greater than 18, we print to the screen that "x is greater than y".