What are conditionals

Conditionals are control flow structures that allow a program to make decisions based on the evaluation of one or more conditions.

Conditionals allow us to branch the flow of the program, executing certain instructions only if a specific condition is met.

Thanks to conditionals, a program can be like one of those games or books where we have to make decisions. Depending on the decision we make, we can have one ending or another.

Well, thanks to conditionals, our program can have many possible execution paths and many possible “endings”.

We can represent a conditional using the following symbol, which is more or less standard in flowcharts.

Understanding Conditionals

Conditionals are structures that are easy to understand. In fact, we use them constantly in our daily lives. For example, when we say:

If it rains, then I take an umbrella.

In this case, we are facing a simple conditional. If the condition is met (raining), we take the umbrella. If not, we do nothing. We could represent it like this.

This type of conditional is usually called IF, and in code, it would look something like this,

if it rains:
    // take umbrella

Another example of a conditional could be needing an alternative action. This action will be executed only if the condition is not true. For example,

If it rains, then I take an umbrella

If not, I take a cap.

In this case, in addition to having an action if the condition is met, we have an action to perform if the condition is not met.

We call this type of structure IF-ELSE, and seen in code, it would look something like this.

if it rains:
    // take umbrella
else:
    // take cap

Types of Conditionals

In programming, there are usually these and other types of conditionals. The most common are:

• IF read more
• IF-ELSE read more
• IF-ELSEIF read more
• SWITCH read more
• Ternary operator read more