Boolean Operators

Estimated time to read: 2 minutes

Boolean comparison cheat sheet¶

x	y	NOT !x	AND x&y	OR x\|y	XOR x^y *
true	true	false	true	true	false
true	false	false	false	true	true
false	true	true	false	true	true
false	false	true	false	false	false

*XOR - If one of them is true, it is true. If neither is true, it is false. If both true, it says they are false

Short Cut Operators¶

&& and | | are 'short circuit' operators These short cut operators do quick checks. With && (AND), if the left hand side is false, Java will not evaluate the right hand side. With || (OR), will not evaluate the right hand side if the left hand side is true

& and | do not short circuit. They are rarely used for logical operations.

&, | and ^ applied to integral variables are performed bitwise

Boolean Operator Examples¶

The boolean operators can be used to combine relational expressions.

Basic boolean comparison example¶

int x = 7;
int y = 9;

if (x < 8 && y <10){ // The expression is true
 // Code
}

The above states, if X is less than 8 and y is less than 10, then execute the code in the code block.

Boolean variable example¶

int x = 7;
int y = 9;

boolean b = b = x || y < 3; // b is true

A boolean variable is assigned to the result of the expression. Is x less than 8, in this instance it is, so it returns true as a short circuit operator is in use. Note! If x was greater than 8, then the code would run against y, as it is an OR statement. The variable b is set to true.