Java logical operator short-circuiting

Question

The && and || operators "short-circuit", meaning they don't evaluate the right-hand side if it isn't necessary.

The & and | operators, when used as logical operators, always evaluate both sides.

There is only one case of short-circuiting for each operator, and they are:

• false && ... - it is not necessary to know what the right-hand side is because the result can only be false regardless of the value there
• true || ... - it is not necessary to know what the right-hand side is because the result can only be true regardless of the value there

Let's compare the behaviour in a simple example:

public boolean longerThan(String input, int length) {
    return input != null && input.length() > length;
}

public boolean longerThan(String input, int length) {
    return input != null & input.length() > length;
}

The 2nd version uses the non-short-circuiting operator & and will throw a NullPointerException if input is null, but the 1st version will return false without an exception.

SET A uses short-circuiting boolean operators.

What 'short-circuiting' means in the context of boolean operators is that for a set of booleans b1, b2, ..., bn, the short circuit versions will cease evaluation as soon as the first of these booleans is true (||) or false (&&).

For example:

// 2 == 2 will never get evaluated because it is already clear from evaluating
// 1 != 1 that the result will be false.
(1 != 1) && (2 == 2)

// 2 != 2 will never get evaluated because it is already clear from evaluating
// 1 == 1 that the result will be true.
(1 == 1) || (2 != 2)

Short circuiting means the second operator will not be checked if the first operator decides the final outcome.

E.g. Expression is: True || False

In case of ||, all we need is one of the side to be True. So if the left hand side is true, there is no point in checking the right hand side, and hence that will not be checked at all.

Similarly, False && True

In case of &&, we need both sides to be True. So if the left hand side is False, there is no point in checking the right hand side, the answer has to be False. And hence that will not be checked at all.

boolean a = (x < z) && (x == x);

This kind will short-circuit, meaning if (x < z) evaluates to false then the latter is not evaluated, a will be false, otherwise && will also evaluate (x == x).

& is a bitwise operator, but also a boolean AND operator which does not short-circuit.

You can test them by something as follows (see how many times the method is called in each case):

public static boolean getFalse() {
    System.out.println("Method");
    return false;
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    if(getFalse() && getFalse()) { }        
    System.out.println("=============================");        
    if(getFalse() & getFalse()) { }
}

In plain terms, short-circuiting means stopping evaluation once you know that the answer can no longer change. For example, if you are evaluating a chain of logical ANDs and you discover a FALSE in the middle of that chain, you know the result is going to be false, no matter what are the values of the rest of the expressions in the chain. Same goes for a chain of ORs: once you discover a TRUE, you know the answer right away, and so you can skip evaluating the rest of the expressions.

You indicate to Java that you want short-circuiting by using && instead of & and || instead of |. The first set in your post is short-circuiting.

Note that this is more than an attempt at saving a few CPU cycles: in expressions like this

if (mystring != null && mystring.indexOf('+') > 0) {
    ...
}

short-circuiting means a difference between correct operation and a crash (in the case where mystring is null).

Java provides two interesting Boolean operators not found in most other computer languages. These secondary versions of AND and OR are known as short-circuit logical operators. As you can see from the preceding table, the OR operator results in true when A is true, no matter what B is.

Similarly, the AND operator results in false when A is false, no matter what B is. If you use the || and && forms, rather than the | and & forms of these operators, Java will not bother to evaluate the right-hand operand alone. This is very useful when the right-hand operand depends on the left one being true or false in order to function properly.

For example, the following code fragment shows how you can take advantage of short-circuit logical evaluation to be sure that a division operation will be valid before evaluating it:

if ( denom != 0 && num / denom >10)

Since the short-circuit form of AND (&&) is used, there is no risk of causing a run-time exception from dividing by zero. If this line of code were written using the single & version of AND, both sides would have to be evaluated, causing a run-time exception when denom is zero.

It is standard practice to use the short-circuit forms of AND and OR in cases involving Boolean logic, leaving the single-character versions exclusively for bitwise operations. However, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, consider the following statement:

 if ( c==1 & e++ < 100 ) d = 100;

Here, using a single & ensures that the increment operation will be applied to e whether c is equal to 1 or not.

Logical OR :- returns true if at least one of the operands evaluate to true. Both operands are evaluated before apply the OR operator.

Short Circuit OR :- if left hand side operand returns true, it returns true without evaluating the right hand side operand.