Control Statements Unit 3

UNIT 3: CONTROL STATEMENTS

UNIT STRCUTURE
3.1 Learning Objectives

3.2 Introduction

3.3 Control Flow Statements

3.3.1 Decision Making Statements

3.3.2 Looping

3.3.3 Branching Statements

3.4 Let Us Sum Up

3.5 Further Readings

3.6 Answers to Check Your Progress

3.7 Model Questions

3.1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to :

l describe different control statements of Java programming language

l use the control flow statements in Java programs

l describe different branching statements

3.2 INTRODUCTION

We have already learnt the basics of Java programming. In the

previous unit, we have learnt about variables, constants, data types,
operators and expressions. In this unit, we will discuss control flow
statements in Java. Different control flow statements like if, if-else, while,
for, break, continue etc. will also be discussed in this unit. In the next unit,
we will discuss about class constructors and passing arguments to
methods.

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Unit 3 Control Statements

3.3 CONTROL FLOW STATEMENTS

When we write a program, we type statements into a file. Without

control flow statements, the compiler executes these statements in the order
they appear in the file from left to right, top to bottom in a sequence. We can
use control flow statements in our programs to conditionally execute
statements, to repeatedly execute a block of statements, and to otherwise
change the normal, sequential flow of control.
Flow control in Java uses similar syntax as in C and C++. The Java
programming language provides several control flow statements, as listed
below :
Decision making : if, if-else, switch-case
Looping : while, do-while, for
Branching : break, continue, label, return

3.3.1 Decision Making Statements

While programing, we have a number of situations where

we may have to change the order of execution of statements based
on certain conditions or decisions. This involves a kind of decision
making to see whether a particular condition has occured or not and
then direct the computer to execute certain statements accordingly.
The statements used to handle those situation are called decision
making statement.
The if and if-else Statements : The if statement enables a program
to selectively execute other statements, based on some criteria.
The syntax of if statement is:

if (boolean_expression)
{
statement-block ;
}

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statement;

The statement-block may be a single statement or a group

of statements. If the boolean-expression evaluates to true, then the
block of code inside the if statement will be executed. If not the first
set of code after the end of the if statement(after the closing curly
brace) will be executed. For example,

if (percentage>=40)
{
System.out.println(“Pass“);
}

In this case, if percentage contains a value that is greater

than or equal to 40, the expression is true, and println( ) will execute.
If percentage contains a value less than 40, then the println( )
method is bypassed. What if we want to perform a different set of
statements if the expression is false? We use the else statement
for that. The general syntax of if-else statement is:

if ( Boolean_expression )
statement; //executes when the expression is true
else
statement; //executes when the expression is false

Let us consider the same example with Pass or Fail depending on

percentage of marks. i.e., if percentage is equal to or more than 40
then the output should be Pass; otherwise Fail. This can be done by
using an if statement along with an else statement. Here is the
segment of code :
if (percentage>=40)
System.out.println(“Pass”);
else
System.out.println(“Fail”);
When a series of decisions are involved, we may have to
use more than one if-else statements in nested form.

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Unit 3 Control Statements

The switch statement : We have seen that when one of the many
alternatives is to be selected, we can design a program using if
statements to control the selection. However, the program becomes
difficult to read and follow when the number of alternatives increases.
Like C/C++, JAVA has a built-in multiway decision statement known
as a switch.
The switch statement provides variable entry points to a block.
It tests the value of a given variable or expression against a list of
case values and when a match is found, a block of statements
associated with that case is executed. The general form of switch
statement is as follows :
switch( expression )
{
case value : statements;
break;
case value : statements
break;
...
default : statements //optional default section
break;
}
The expression is evaluated and compared in turn with each
value prefaced by the case keyword. The values must be constants
(i.e., determinable at compile-time) and may be of type byte, char,
short, int, or long.

3.3.2 Looping

In looping, a sequence of statements are executed until some

conditions for the termination of the loop are satisfied. The process
of repeatedly executing a block of statements is known as looping.
At this point, we should remember that Java does not support goto
statement. Like C/C++, Java also provides the three different

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Control Statements Unit 3

statements for looping. These are:

Ø while
Ø do-while
Ø for

The while and do-while statements : We use a while statement

to continuously execute a block while the condition remains true.
The general syntax of the while statement is:

while(expression)
{
statement(s);
}

First, the while statement evaluates expression , which must

return a boolean value. If the expression returns true, the while
statement executes the statement(s) in the while block. The while
statement continues testing the expression and executing its block
until the expression returns false.
The Java programming language provides another statement
that is similar to the while statement : the do-while statement. The
general syntax of do-while is:

do
{
statement(s);
}while (expression);

Statements within the block associated with a do-while are

executed at least once. Instead of evaluating the expression at the
top of the loop, do-while evaluates the expression at the bottom.
A program of while loop is shown below in program 3.1:

//Program 3.1 : Fibo.java

class Fibo

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Unit 3 Control Statements

{
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println("0\n1");
int n0=0,n1=1,n2=1;
while(n2<50)
{
System.out.println(n2);
n0=n1;
n1=n2;
n2=n1+n0;
}
System.out.println(n2);
}
}
The output of the above program will be the Fibonacci series
between 0 to 50 (i.e., 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34).

The for statement : The for statement provides a compact way to

iterate over a range of values. The general form of the for statement
can be expressed like this:

for (initialization; termination_condition; increment)

{
statement(s);
}

The initialization is an expression that initializes the loop. It is

executed once at the beginning of the loop. The termination_condition
determines when to terminate the loop. This condition is evaluated
at the top of each iteration of the loop. When the condition evaluates
to false, the loop terminates. Finally, increment is an expression that
gets invoked after each iteration through the loop. All these
components are optional. In fact, to write an infinite loop, we can

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omit all three expressions:

for ( ; ; )
{
// infinite loop
}
Often, for loops are used to iterate over the elements in an
array or the characters in a string. The following program segment
uses a for loop to calculate the summation of 1 to 50:
for (i =1; i <= 50 ; i + +)
{
sum = sum + i ;
}

3.3.3 Branching Statements

The Java programming language supports three branching

statements:
Ø The break statement
Ø The continue statement
Ø The return statement

The break statement : In Java, the break statements has two forms:
unlabelled and labelled. We have seen the unlabelled form of the
break statement used with switch earlier. As noted there, an
unlabelled break terminates the enclosing switch statement, and the
flow of control transfers to the statement immediately following the
switch. It can be used to terminate a for, while, or do-while loop. A
break (unlabelled form) statement, causes an immediate jump out
of a loop to the first statement after its end. When the break
statement is encountered inside a loop, the loop is immediately exited
and the program continues with the statement immediately following
the loop. When the loop is nested, the break would only exit from the
loop containing it. This means, the break will exit only a single loop.

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The continue statement : The continue statement causes an

immediate branch to the end of the innermost loop that encloses it,
skipping over any intervening statements. It is written as:

continue ;

A continue does not cause an exit from the loop. Instead, it

immediately initiates the next iteration. We can use the continue
statement to skip the current iteration of a for, while, or do-while loop.
In Java, we can give a label to a block of statements. A label
is any valid Java variable name. To give a label to a loop, we have to
place the label name before the loop with a colon at the end. For
example,
loop1: for(...............)
{
.................
.................
}
.................
We have seen that a simple break statement causes the
control to jump outside the nearest loop and a simple continue
statement returns the current loop. If we want to jump outside a
nested loop or to continue a loop that is outside the current one,
then we may have to use the labelled break and labelled continue
statement. The labelled form of break and continue can be used as
follows:
//Program 3.2 : breakDemo.java
class breakDemo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
outer: for(int i=1;i<100;i++)
{
System.out.println(" ");
if(i>=10)
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Control Statements Unit 3

break;
for( int j=1;j<100;j++)
{
System.out.print("* ");
if(j==i)
continue outer;//labelled continue
}
}
}
}
The output of the above program will be like this:

Figure 3.1: Output of program 3.2

The return statement : The last of the branching statements is the

return statement. We can use return to exit from the current method.
The flow of control returns to the statement that follows the original
method call. The return statement has two forms: one that returns a
value and one that doesnot. To return a value, simply put the value
(or an expression that calculates the value) after the return keyword:

return sum;

The data type of the value returned by return must match the
type of the method’s declared return value. When a method is
declared void, use the form of return that doesnot return a value:

return;

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