Are multiple 'if' statements and 'if-else-if' statements the same for mutually exclusive conditions?

Question

Is there any difference between writing multiple if statements and if-else-if statements ?

When I tried to write a program with multiple if statements, It did not give the expected results, But it worked with if-else-if.

The conditions were mutually exclusive.

Answer 1

When you write multiple if statements, it's possible that more than one of them will be evaluated to true, since the statements are independent of each other.

When you write a single if else-if else-if ... else statement, only one condition can be evaluated to true (once the first condition that evaluates to true is found, the next else-if conditions are skipped).

You can make multiple if statements behave like a single if else-if .. else statement if each of the condition blocks breaks out of the block that contains the if statements (for example, by returning from the method or breaking from a loop).

For example :

public void foo (int x)
{
    if (x>7) {
        ...
        return;
    }
    if (x>5) {
        ...
        return;
    }    
}

Will have the same behavior as :

public void foo (int x)
{
    if (x>7) {
        ...
    }
    else if (x>5) {
        ...
    }
}

But without the return statements it will have different behavior when x>5 and x>7 are both true.