3.1 Boolean Expressions

Sometimes, we want to compare two numbers or see if two things are equal. To do this, we use boolean expressions, which represent logic and tell whether something is true or false. These are the two values that boolean primitive types can take!

Boolean Operators

There are several operators that can be used to create boolean expressions. Any statement containing these operators will result in a boolean. Here are the operators and what they do:

• == equals to (two primitive types have the same value)

• != checks for inequality (not equal)

• < less than

• <= less than or equal to

• > greater than

• >= greater than or equal to

We will restrict the equality and inequality operators to primitive types for now. We will discuss the equality of objects in 3.7! The four remaining operators only work for numerical types (integers and doubles), but they work exactly like you would expect (ie. 3 < 5 returns true while 3 >= 5 returns false).

You can use boolean statements in conjunction with other operators as well, such as in the following statement: (a%2) == 0

This statement is asking if the value represented by a is even or not. If it is even, then we return true. If it is not, we return false.