The equality and relational operators determine if one operand is greater than, less than, equal to,
or not equal to another operand. The majority of these operators will probably look familiar to
you as well. Keep in mind that you must use "==
", not "=
", when testing if two
primitive values are equal.
== equal to != not equal to > greater than >= greater than or equal to < less than <= less than or equal to
ComparisonDemo
,
tests the comparison operators:
class ComparisonDemo { public static void main(String[] args){ int value1 = 1; int value2 = 2; if(value1 == value2) System.out.println("value1 == value2"); if(value1 != value2) System.out.println("value1 != value2"); if(value1 > value2) System.out.println("value1 > value2"); if(value1 < value2) System.out.println("value1 < value2"); if(value1 <= value2) System.out.println("value1 <= value2"); } }
value1 != value2 value1 < value2 value1 <= value2
The Conditional Operators
The &&
and ||
operators perform Conditional-AND and
Conditional-OR operations
on two boolean expressions. These operators exhibit "short-circuiting" behavior, which means that the
second operand is evaluated only if needed.
&& Conditional-AND || Conditional-OR
The following program,
ConditionalDemo1
, tests these operators:
class ConditionalDemo1 { public static void main(String[] args){ int value1 = 1; int value2 = 2; if((value1 == 1) && (value2 == 2)) System.out.println("value1 is 1 AND value2 is 2"); if((value1 == 1) || (value2 == 1)) System.out.println("value1 is 1 OR value2 is 1"); } }
Another conditional operator is ?:
, which can be thought of as
shorthand for an if-then-else
statement (discussed in the
Control Flow Statements
section
of this lesson).
This operator is also known as the ternary operator because it
uses three operands.
In the following example, this operator should be read as: "If someCondition
is true
, assign the value of value1
to result
.
Otherwise, assign the value of value2
to result
."
The following program,
ConditionalDemo2
, tests the ?:
operator:
class ConditionalDemo2 { public static void main(String[] args){ int value1 = 1; int value2 = 2; int result; boolean someCondition = true; result = someCondition ? value1 : value2; System.out.println(result); } }
Because someCondition
is true, this program prints "1" to the screen.
Use the ?:
operator instead of an if-then-else
statement if it makes your code more readable; for example, when the expressions
are compact and without side-effects (such as assignments).
The Type Comparison Operator instanceof
The instanceof
operator compares an object to a specified type.
You can use it to test if an object is
an instance of a class, an instance of a subclass, or an instance of a class that implements a particular interface.
The following program,
InstanceofDemo
,
defines a parent class (named Parent
), a simple interface (named MyInterface
), and a child class (named Child
) that inherits from the parent and implements the interface.
class InstanceofDemo { public static void main(String[] args) { Parent obj1 = new Parent(); Parent obj2 = new Child(); System.out.println("obj1 instanceof Parent: " + (obj1 instanceof Parent)); System.out.println("obj1 instanceof Child: " + (obj1 instanceof Child)); System.out.println("obj1 instanceof MyInterface: " + (obj1 instanceof MyInterface)); System.out.println("obj2 instanceof Parent: " + (obj2 instanceof Parent)); System.out.println("obj2 instanceof Child: " + (obj2 instanceof Child)); System.out.println("obj2 instanceof MyInterface: " + (obj2 instanceof MyInterface)); } } class Parent{} class Child extends Parent implements MyInterface{} interface MyInterface{}
obj1 instanceof Parent: true obj1 instanceof Child: false obj1 instanceof MyInterface: false obj2 instanceof Parent: true obj2 instanceof Child: true obj2 instanceof MyInterface: true
instanceof
operator, keep in mind that null
is not an instance of anything.