DECISION-MAKING STATEMENTS

 Decision-making statements in a programming language help the programmer to transfer the control from one part to
other parts of the program.
 Thus, these decision-making statements facilitate the programmer in determining the flow of control.
 This involves a decision-making condition to see whether a particular condition is satisfied or not.
 On the basis of real time applications it is essential:

(i)to alter the flow of a program.

(ii) to test the logical conditions.
(iii) to control the flow of execution as per the selection.

 These conditions can be placed in the program using decision-making statements.

 C language supports the control statements as listed below:
(i) The if statement
(ii) The if–else statement
(iii) The if–else–if ladder statement
(iv) The switch case statement
(v) The goto unconditional jump
(vi) The loop statement

 Besides, the C also supports other control statements such as continue, break.

 The decision-making statement checks the given condition and then executes its sub-block.
 The decision statement decides which statement to execute after the success or failure of a given
condition.
 The conditional statements use relational operators.
 The relational operators are useful for comparing the two values.
 They can be used to check whether they are equal to each other, unequal or one is smaller/greater than the other.
 The reader or the programmer is supposed to understand the concepts as cited above.

 Following points are expected to be known to the programmer related to the decision-making statements.

 Sequential execution:
 The statements in the program are executed one after another in a sequential manner.
 This is called the sequential execution.

 Transfer of control:
 The C statements such as if, goto, break, continue, switch allow a program to transfer the control at different places in
the program.
 This is accomplished by skipping one or more statements appearing in a sequential flow.
 This jumping of control is called the transfer of control.

THE if STATEMENT
 C uses the keyword if to execute a set of command
lines or one command line when the logical condition
is true.
 It has only one option.
 The sets of command lines are executed only when the
logical condition is true (see Figure 1).

Fig(1): The if statement

 The if statement contains an expression which is evaluated. If the expression is true it returns 1,
otherwise 0.
 The statement is executed when the condition is true. In case the condition is false, the compiler skips the lines within
the if block.
 The condition is always enclosed within a pair of parentheses.
 The conditional statements should not be terminated with semi-colons (;).
 The statements following the if statement are normally enclosed within curly braces.
 The curly braces indicate the scope of the if statement.
 The default scope is one statement.
 But it is good practice to use curly braces even if a single statement is used following the if condition.

 Program to check whether the entered number is less than 10. If yes, display the same.
 Fig(2): The if statement (flow of control)

Explanation:
 In the above program, the user can enter the number.
 The entered number is checked with the if statement.
 If it is less than 10, a message ‘Number entered is less than 10’ is displayed.
 For the sake of understanding, Figure 2 is given for the above program.

THE if–else STATEMENT

 The if–else statement takes care of the true and false conditions.
 It has two blocks.
 One block is for if and it is executed when the condition is true.
 The other block is of else and it is executed when the condition is false.
 The else statement cannot be used without if.
 No multiple else statements are allowed with one if (see Figures 3 and 4).
 The flow chart for the if–else statement is given in Figure 4.
 Fig(3): The if–else statements

Fig(4): The if–else statement (flow control)

 Program to find the roots of a quadratic equation by using if-else condition.

 Explanation:
 The user can enter the values of a, b and c in the
above program.
NESTED if–else STATEMENTS

 In this kind of statement, a number of logical conditions are checked for executing various statements.
 Here, if any logical condition is true the compiler executes the block followed by if condition, otherwise it skips and
executes the else block.
 In the if–else statement, the else block is executed by default after failure of condition
 In order to execute the else block depending upon certain condition we can add, repetitively, if statements in else block.
This kind of nesting will be unlimited.
 Figure 5 describes the nested if–else–if blocks.
 Syntax of nested if-else statement can be given as
follows:

Fig(5): Nested if–else statements(flow control)

 From the above block, following rules can be described for applying nested if-else-if statements:

1. Nested if-else can be chained with one another.

2. If the condition is true control passes to the block following first if.
 In that case, we may have one more if statement whose condition is again checked.
 This process continues till there is no if statement in the last if block.

3. If the condition is false control passes to else block.

 In that case, we may have one more if statement whose condition is again checked.
 This process continues till there is no if statement in the last else block.
THE if-else-if LADDER STATEMENT

 In this kind of statement, a number of logical conditions are checked for executing various statements.
 Here, if the first logical condition is true the compiler executes the block followed by first if condition,
 otherwise it skips that block and checks for next logical condition followed by else-if, if the condition
is true the block of statements followed by that if condition is executed.
 The process is continued until a true condition is occurred or an else block is occurred.
 If all if conditions become false, it executes the else block.
 In the if-else-if ladder statement, the else block may or may not have the else block.

 In if-else-if ladder statement we do not have to pair if statements with the else statements that is we do not have to
remember the number of braces opened like nested if-else.
 So it is simpler to code than nested if-else and having same effect as nested if-else.
 The statement is named as if-else-if ladder because it forms a ladder like structure as shown in Figure 6.

Fig(6): if–else–if ladder statement

 Syntax of if-else-if statement can be given as follows:

 From the above block, following rules can be described

for applying nested if-else-if
statements:

 Nested if-else can be chained with one another.

 If the first if condition is false control passes to else-if
block where condition is again checked with the next if
statement.
 This process continues till there is no if statement in the
last else block.
 If one of the if statements satisfies the condition, other
nested else-if statement will not be executed.
 Program to calculate electricity bill. Read the starting and ending meter reading.The charges are as follows:
Explanation:
 Initial and final readings are entered through the keyboard.
 Their difference is nothing but the total energy consumed.
 As per the table given in the example, rates are applied and total bill based on consumption of energy is
calculated.
THE break STATEMENT
 The keyword break allows the programmers to terminate the loop.
 The break skips from the loop or block in which it is defined.
 The control then automatically goes to the first statement after the loop or block.
 The break can be associated with all conditional statements.

 We can also use the break statements in the nested loops

 If we use the break statement in the innermost loop, then the control of the program is terminated only from the
innermost loop.

 The difference between the break and exit() is provided in Table

THE continue STATEMENT
 The continue statement is exactly opposite of the break statement.
 The continue statement is used for continuing the next iteration of the loop statements.
 When it occurs in the loop, it dose not terminate, but it skips the statements after this statement.
 It is useful when we want to continue the program without executing any part of the program.
 Table gives the differences between break and continue.
THE goto STATEMENT
 This statement does not require any condition.
 This is an unconditional control jump.
 This statement passes control anywhere in the program,
i.e. control is transferred to another part of the program
without testing any condition.
 User has to define the goto statement as follows:
goto label;
where, the label name must start with any character.

 Here, the label is the position where the control is to be

transferred.
 Program to detect the entered number as to whether
it is even or odd.
 Use the goto statement.

Explanation:
 In the above program, a number is entered.
 The number is checked for even or odd with modules division
operator.
THE switch STATEMENT

 The switch statement is a multi-way branch statement.

 In the program, if there is a possibility to make a choice from a number of options, this structured selection is useful.
 The switch statement requires only one argument of any data type, which is checked with the number of case options.
 The switch statement evaluates expression and then looks for its value among the case constants.
 If the value matches with case constant, this particular case statement is executed.
 If not, default is executed.
 Here, switch, case and default are reserved keywords.
 Every case statement terminates with ‘:’.
 The break statement is used to exit from current case structure.
 The switch statement is useful for writing the menu-driven program.

 The syntax of the switch case statement is as follows:

(a) The switch expression

 In the block, the variable or expression can be a character or an integer.

 The integer expression following the keyword switch will yield an integer value only.
 The integer may be any value 1, 2, 3, and so on.
 In case a character constant, the values may be given in the alphabetic order such as ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’.

(b) The switch organization

 The switch expression should not be terminated with a semi-colon and/or with any other
symbol.
 The entire case structure following switch should be enclosed with curly braces.
 The keyword case is followed by a constant.
 Every constant terminates with a colon.
 Each case statement must contain different constant values.
 Any number of case statements can be provided.
 If the case structure contains multiple statements, they need not be enclosed with curly braces.
 Here, the keywords case and break perform the job of opening and
closing curly braces, respectively.

(c) The switch execution

 When one of the cases satisfies, the statements following it are executed.
 In case, there is no match, the default case is executed.
 The default can be put anywhere in the switch expression.
 The switch statement can also be written without the default statement.
 The break statement used in switch causes the control to go outside the switch block.
 By mistake, if no break statements are given all the cases following it are executed
(see Figure).
 Program to print lines by selecting the choice:

Explanation:

 In this program, a menu appears with five options and

it requests the users to enter their choice.
 The choice entered by the user is then passed to switch
statement.
 In the switch statement, the value is checked with all
the case constants.
 The matched case statement is executed in which the
line is printed of the user’s choice.
 If the user enters a non-listed value, then no match
occurs and default is executed.
 The default warns the user with a message ‘Invalid
Choice’.
NESTED switch CASE

 The C supports nested switch statements.

 The inner switch can be a part of an outer switch.
 The inner and outer switch case constants may be the same.
 No conflicts arise even if they are the same.
 Program to detect if the entered number is even or odd. Use nested switch case statements.

Explanation:

 In the above-given program, the first switch statement is used for displaying
the message such as even or odd numbers when the entered numbers are 0
and 1, respectively.
THE switch CASE AND NESTED ifs

 The distinction between the switch case and the nested ifs is narrated in Table.

 Program to convert integer to character using if condition.

Explanation:

 In this program, the variable ‘x’ is declared as an integer variable.

 Its value is entered through the keyboard.
 The ASCII value of entered number is checked with the if statement.
 If there is a match, the ASCII, value is displayed.