Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Logical Operators, || or OR?


I remember reading a while back in regards to logical operators that in the case of OR , using || was better than or (or visa versa).



I just had to use this in my project when it came back to me but I can't remember which operator was recommended or if it was even true.



Which is better and why? Thank you!


Source: Tips4all

4 comments:

  1. There is no "better" but the more common one is ||. They have different precedence and || would work like one would expect normally.

    See also: Logical operators (the following example is taken from there):

    // The result of the expression (false || true) is assigned to $e
    // Acts like: ($e = (false || true))
    $e = false || true;

    // The constant false is assigned to $f and then true is ignored
    // Acts like: (($f = false) or true)
    $f = false or true;

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  2. They are used for different purposes and in fact have different operator precedences. The && and || operators are intended for Boolean conditions, whereas and and or are intended for control flow.

    For example, the following is a Boolean condition:

    if ($foo == $bar && $baz != $quxx) {


    This differs from control flow:

    doSomething() or die();

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  3. There is nothing bad or better, It just depends on the precedence of operators. Since '||' has higher precedence than 'or', so '||' is mostly used.

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  4. I don't think one is inherently better than another one, but I would suggest sticking with || because it is the default in most languages.

    EDIT: As others have pointed out there is indeed a difference between the two.

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