Decision Making and Branching

Decision Making in C (if , if..else, Nested if, if-else-if )

The conditional statements (also known as decision control structures) such as if, if else, switch, etc.
are used for decision-making purposes in C programs.

They are also known as Decision-Making Statements and are used to evaluate one or more conditions
and make the decision whether to execute a set of statements or not. These decision-making
statements in programming languages decide the direction of the flow of program execution.

Need of Conditional Statements

Conditional statements are essential tools in scientific research and data analysis, enabling researchers
to execute context-specific decisions and logical operations. These statements allow for dynamic
adaptability in experiments, ensuring that specific actions or outcomes are triggered only when certain
conditions are met. For instance, in bioinformatics workflows, conditional statements can automate
processes such as filtering out low-quality sequences in genome assemblies or applying distinct
analytical methods depending on the nature of the input data. Similarly, in experimental biology,
conditional logic can guide the design of experiments where subsequent steps depend on prior results,
such as selecting specific reagents or protocols based on initial screening outcomes.

Types of Conditional Statements in C

Following are the decision-making statements available in C:

1. if in C

The if statement is the simplest decision-making statement. It is used to decide whether a certain
statement or block of statements will be executed or not i.e if a certain condition is true then a block
of statements is executed otherwise not.

Syntax of if Statement

if(condition)

// Statements to execute if

// condition is true

Here, the condition after evaluation will be either true or false. C if statement accepts boolean values
– if the value is true then it will execute the block of statements below it otherwise not. If we do not
provide the curly braces ‘{‘ and ‘}’ after if(condition) then by default if statement will consider the first
immediately below statement to be inside its block.

Flowchart of if Statement

2. if-else in C
The if statement alone tells us that if a condition is true it will execute a block of statements and if the
condition is false it won’t. But what if we want to do something else when the condition is false? Here
comes the C else statement. We can use the else statement with the if statement to execute a block
of code when the condition is false. The if-else statement consists of two blocks, one for false
expression and one for true expression.

Syntax of if else in C

if (condition)

// Executes this block if

// condition is true

else

// Executes this block if

// condition is false

Flowchart of if-else Statement

3. Nested if-else in C

A nested if in C is an if statement that is the target of another if statement. Nested if statements mean
an if statement inside another if statement. Yes, C allow us to nested if statements within if statements,
i.e, we can place an if statement inside another if statement.
Syntax of Nested if-else

if (condition1)

// Executes when condition1 is true

if (condition_2)

// statement 1

else

// Statement 2

else {

if (condition_3)

// statement 3

else

// Statement 4

Flowchart of Nested if-else

The if else if statements are used when the user has to decide among multiple options. The C if
statements are executed from the top down. As soon as one of the conditions controlling the if is true,
the statement associated with that if is executed, and the rest of the C else-if ladder is bypassed. If
none of the conditions is true, then the final else statement will be executed. if-else-if ladder is similar
to the switch statement.

Syntax of if-else-if Ladder

if (condition)

statement;

else if (condition)

statement;

else

statement;

Flowchart
5. switch Statement in C

The switch case statement is an alternative to the if else if ladder that can be used to execute the
conditional code based on the value of the variable specified in the switch statement. The switch block
consists of cases to be executed based on the value of the switch variable.

Syntax of switch

switch (expression) {

case value1:

statements;

case value2:

statements;

....

....

....

default:

statements;

Flowchart
6. Conditional Operator in C

The conditional operator is used to add conditional code in our program. It is similar to the if-else
statement. It is also known as the ternary operator as it works on three operands.

Syntax of Conditional Operator

(condition) ? [true_statements] : [false_statements];

Flowchart of Conditional Operator

These statements are used in C for the unconditional flow of control throughout the functions in a
program. They support four types of jump statements:

A) break

This loop control statement is used to terminate the loop. As soon as the break statement is
encountered from within a loop, the loop iterations stop there, and control returns from the loop
immediately to the first statement after the loop.

Syntax of break

break;

B) continue

This loop control statement is just like the break statement. The continue statement is opposite to that
of the break statement, instead of terminating the loop, it forces to execute the next iteration of the
loop.
As the name suggests the continue statement forces the loop to continue or execute the next iteration.
When the continue statement is executed in the loop, the code inside the loop following the continue
statement will be skipped and the next iteration of the loop will begin.

Syntax of continue

continue;

C) goto

The goto statement in C also referred to as the unconditional jump statement can be used to jump
from one point to another within a function.

Syntax of goto
Syntax1 | Syntax2

----------------------------

goto label; | label:

. | .

. | .

. | .

label: | goto label;

In the above syntax, the first line tells the compiler to go to or jump to the statement marked as a label.
Here, a label is a user-defined identifier that indicates the target statement. The statement
immediately followed after ‘label:’ is the destination statement. The ‘label:’ can also appear before the
‘goto label;’ statement in the above syntax.

D) return

The return in C returns the flow of the execution to the function from where it is called. This statement
does not mandatorily need any conditional statements. As soon as the statement is executed, the flow
of the program stops immediately and returns the control from where it was called. The return
statement may or may not return anything for a void function, but for a non-void function, a return
value must be returned.