Why are there 2 boolean type operators in Java?

Question

As said in thinking in Java if you have 2 boolean objects, x and y you can use either x= x&&y and x=x&y on them, so why its necessary having both types?

Answer 1

The two operators act differently:

• & will always evaluate both operands
• && is short-circuiting - if the first operand evaluates to false, then the overall result will always be false, and the second operand isn't evaluated

See the Java Language Specification for more details:

• Section 15.22 (Boolean Logical Operators) for &
• Section 15.23 (Conditional-And Operator) for &&