All right.

So now let's talk about something really useful in programming--

conditional statements. So conditional expressions allow your programs to make
decisions and take different forks in the road, something I alluded to little
earlier, depending on the values of variables, or based on what the user inputs at
the programmer, at the command line, or if you have a prompt or something like
that. C has a couple of different ways to express conditional expressions, which we
also sometimes will call a conditional branch in your programs. And some of these
are going to look pretty familiar to you from scratch, so we'll even pull them up
side by side, just you can make that analogy in your head. So, if-- if is a pretty
simple conditional. If you recall from scratch on the right here you could fill in
that is hexagon with a blue expression if mouse down or if x is less than 10, or
something like that. And then, if x was less than 10, or if the mouse was in fact,
down, all of the code inside of the puzzle piece would execute. All the things that
fit inside that C shape.

Similarly, do we have if on the left there. If Boolean expression, which I'm just
using as a substitute for one of the Boolean expressions we previously discussed,
open curly brace, close curly brace. So think of open curly brace and closed curly
brace as sort of analogous to the sandwich effect of the if block on the right from
scratch.

If the Boolean expression in the if statement is true, then all the lines of code
between the curly braces will execute in order from top to bottom. If the Boolean
expression is false, we'll skip over everything in between the curly braces,
because we only want to go down that fork in the road if the Boolean expression is
true.

We can take this one step further with if else. So this Scratch block is pretty
similar to the one we saw just a second ago, except it takes two different paths
based on what happens. So if the mouse was down, or if x was less than 10, we'll do
everything that's in between that first fork, that first C. ,

Otherwise, if the mouse is up, or x is not less than 10, we will do everything in
the second set. And that's analogous to what you see here for C. If Boolean
expression, do the stuff between the first set of curly braces. Else, do the stuff
between the second set of curly braces. So if the Boolean expression is true, we'll
do whatever's between the first set. If the Boolean expression is false, that would
trigger the else, and we would do whatever's in the second set of curly braces.
Again, top to bottom, all lines in between the braces.

In C, it's possible to create an if-else if-else chain. In fact you can have if-
else if-else if-else, if, and so on and so on and so on. In Scratch, this required
nesting the blocks. You add an if-else, and you had to put another one inside of
the else, and so on, and it got kind of nested and complicated. But C, we don't
have to do that. We can actually just have it be a chain like this. Again, as you
might expect, all of these branches are mutually exclusive. You can only ever go
down one of the branch. If this is true. Otherwise, if this is true. Otherwise, if
this is true. Otherwise, do this. So all four of the branches in this example are
mutually exclusive. It's an if-else if-else chain.

It is possible though, and sometimes very useful, to create a chain of not mutually
exclusive branches. In this example, only the third and fourth branches are
mutually exclusive. It could be that you could satisfy the first condition, and you
could satisfy the second condition, and you could satisfy the third condition-- in
which case you would go down the first branch, then you go down a second branch,
then you would go down the third branch. Or perhaps you satisfy the first
condition, and the second condition, but you don't satisfy the third condition. In
this case you go down the first branch and the second branch, and then the fourth
branch,
The reason for this is that the else will only bind to the nearest if. So even
though there's an else here, that doesn't necessarily create a mutually exclusive
chain of everything. It's only the expression there with Boolean expression 3--
that's the mutually exclusive with the else. So it is possible, and sometimes quite
useful, as I said, to create a chain of not mutually exclusive branches. Let's take
a look at a different kind of conditional, which you have not seen before in
Scratch. There's something called the switch statement. The switch statement is
kind of neat because it's a conditional statement that allows you to specify
distinct cases, instead of relying on Boolean expressions to make decisions for
you. So for example, let's say that I have this program, and I'm asking the user to
provide input to me. So I say, int x = Get Int(), and if you're not familiar yet,
get int is a function that is also included in the CS50 library, so if you #include
CS50.H you'll have access to Get Int() and all of its cousins-- GetFloat,
GetString, and so on. Basically one Get function for every data type that we've
already discussed.

So Int x equals GetInt. Basically what's happening is I'm at the terminal. I'm
asking the user to type in a number.

And here I'm switching what I'm doing, depending on what the user typed at the
prompt. So if they typed one, I print out one. And then I break. If they type two,
I print out two. And then I break. It's important to break between each case
because otherwise you will fall through. So if I didn't have any breaks there, and
the user typed one, what would happen is it would print one, two, three, sorry.
That's kind of strange behavior, right? You might think so. But there are actually
some cases where this could be a pretty useful thing. So here's another example of
a switch statement where I omit the breaks. But I do it on purpose.

So what happens here? Think for a second. You may even want to pause the video.

What happens here if the user types four? So I've asked the user for input. And
they provide the value 4. What gets printed when I do that? On the previous slide,
there were breaks between all the cases. And so it would just print four and then
stop. But in this case, it won't. What will happen is you will fall through each
case.

So in this case I've organized my cases in such a way that if the user types 4, I
will print four, three, two, one, blast off. And if they typed 5, I would start at
five and do the same thing. If they typed 1, I would just do one, blast off.

So in this case, I'm using a switch kind of cleverly so that I do intend to fall
through all the cases. But generally you're probably gonna want to break between
all of them, unless you have a situation like this one where you're kind of
leveraging the fact that you'll fall through the cases without a break. So that's
the second of the major types of conditional statements. The last of which is ?: So
I have two snippets of C code here. One on the left and one on the right. The one
on the left should probably be pretty familiar to you.

I have Int x. And I probably should have asked the user for-- this should probably
be Int x equals GetInt, or something like that. And then I'm making a decision. If
some Boolean expression is true, assign x the value 5. Otherwise, assign x the
value 6.

That on the left should probably be pretty familiar from our discussion of If Else
just a moment ago. Would you be surprised to know that the line on the right does
the exact same thing?

So this is called ?: or sometimes called the ternary operator. And it's pretty
cool. It's usually used as a cute trick.

But what it allows you to do is to simulate an If Else with really small, really
trivially short conditional branches. You generally wouldn't use ?: if you had six
lines of code between each set of curly braces. But if you're just making a quick
decision, if you're going to do one thing or the other and it's very simple, this
might be an example of how to do it with ?: the ternary operator. So Int x equals
expression ? The thing after the question mark is what x's value will be if
expression is true.

The thing after the colon is what x's value would be if the expression was false.
So I'm asking myself, is the expression true? If it is, assign x the value 5. If
it's not, assign x the value 6. Again, like I said. This is usually just a cute
trick. And sometimes if you become really comfortable with it, you'll do this
because it looks kind of cool in your programs. Generally I'm presenting it to you
now so you're familiar with it if you see it. But certainly know you don't have to
write it in any of your code. But it is something to be familiar with, because
you'll definitely encounter snippets of code here and there where this ?: syntax,
AKA the ternary operator, is used.

So quick summary on what conditionals are, and what the options are available to
you in C. You have If and if-else, and if else if, et cetera. You can use Boolean
expressions for those to make decisions.

With switch statements you use discrete cases to make decisions. You would
specifically say, if it's one, or if it's two, or if it's three, I'll do this
thing, or this thing, or this thing. And ?: can to be used to replace very simple
if-else branches, or if-else chains to make your code look a little fancy.

I'm Doug Lloyd. And this is CS50.