Decision Control Structure

Dr.Rab Nawaz Jadoon

Department of Computer Science Assistant Professor
COMSATS University, Abbottabad
DCS Pakistan
COMSATS Univeresity, Islamabad
(Abbottabad Campus)

Programming Fundamental
 Decision control structure
 Before this we have used sequence control
structure in which,
 Various steps are executed sequentially, i.e. in the
same order in which they appear in the program.
 By default the instructions in a program are executed
sequentially.

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 Decision control structure

 Many a times, we want a set of instructions to

be executed in one situation, and an entirely
different set of instructions to be executed in
another situation.
 This kind of situation is dealt in C programs using a
decision control instruction.

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 Decision control structure

 Decision control instruction can be implemented

in C using:
 The if statement
 The if-else statement
 The conditional operators

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 The If Statement

 Like most languages, C uses the keyword if to

implement the decision control instruction.
 The general form of if statement looks like this:
if ( this condition is true )
execute this statement ;
 The condition following the keyword if is always enclosed
within a pair of parentheses.
 If the condition, whatever it is, is true, then the statement is
executed.
 If the condition is not true then the statement is not
executed; instead the program skips past it.

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 Single and double control structure

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 The If Statement
 We express a condition using C’s ‘relational’
operators.
 The relational operators allow us to compare two
values to see whether they are equal to each other,
unequal, or whether one is greater than the other.

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 Simple Program using If statement

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 If Control Structure

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 Problem
 While purchasing certain items, a discount of 10% is offered if the
quantity purchased is more than 1000. If quantity and price per item are
input through the keyboard, write a program to calculate the total
expenses???

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 Solution (Flow Chart & Program)

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 Multiple statements within If
 More than one statement to be executed if the
expression following if is satisfied.
 If such multiple statements are to be executed then
they must be placed within a pair of braces.
 For example,
If(condition)
{
---------
---------
}

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 Program
Flow chart Program

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 Quiz
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h> What would be the output???
main( )
{ Nothing
int a = 300, b, c ;
if ( a >= 400 ) What would be the output, if a=500???
{
b = 300 ; 300 200
c = 200 ;
printf ( "\n %d %d", b, c ) ;
}
getche ();
}

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 The if-else Structure

 Execute one group of statements if the

expression evaluates to true and another group
of statements if the expression evaluates to
false.
 This is done using the if-else control structure.
 For example,
If student’s grade is greater than or equal to 60
Print “Passed”
else
Print “Failed”

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 If-else Example

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 Program illustrating if-else

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 Quiz ???
 What would be the output of the following
program???

x and y are equal

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 Quiz ???
 What would be the output of the following
program???

C is WOW

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 Quiz ???
 Identify the error from the following

}
No Error, a and b are equal

No Error

No Error

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 Identify the errors

No Error

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 Forms of if

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 Use of logical operators

 C allows usage of three logical operators,

namely, &&, || and !.
 These are to be read as ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’
respectively.
 Two of them are composed of double symbols:
 || and &&.
 Don’t use the single symbol | and &. These single symbols
also have a meaning. They are bitwise operators.
 The first two operators, && and ||, allow two or more
conditions to be combined in an if statement.

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 Working of three logical operators

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 Example

 The marks obtained by a student in 5 different

subjects are input through the keyboard.
 The student gets a division as per the following
rules:
 Percentage above or equal to 60 - First division
 Percentage between 50 and 59 - Second division
 Percentage between 40 and 49 - Third division
 Percentage less than 40 - Fail
 Write a program to calculate the division obtained by
the student.

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 Solution (Method-1)

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 Problems faced in the program
 This is a straight forward program. Observe that
the program uses nested if-elses.
 This leads to three disadvantages:
 As the number of conditions go on increasing the level of
indentation also goes on increasing. As a result the whole
program creeps to the right.
 Care needs to be exercised to match the corresponding if’s
and elses.
 Care needs to be exercised to match the corresponding pair
of braces.

 Note: All these three problems can be eliminated by usage of ‘Logical

operators’. (Method 2)

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 Solution (Method-2)

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 The Else if Clause (Method -3)
 There is one more way in which we can write
the previous program,

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 The Else if Clause (Method -3)
 Note that the else if clause is nothing different.
 It is just a way of rearranging the else with the if that
follows it.
 This would be evident if you look at the following
code:

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 The Else if Clause

 Problem
 A company insures its drivers in the following cases:
 If the driver is married.
 If the driver is unmarried, male & above 30 years of age.
 If the driver is unmarried, female & above 25 years of age.
 In all other cases the driver is not insured. If the
marital status, sex and age of the driver are the
inputs.
 Write a program to determine whether the driver is
to be insured or not?

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 Solution-1

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 Solution-2

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 Problem…

 Write a program to calculate the salary as per

the following table:

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 Solution

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 Cont…

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 The ! Operator

 This operator reverses the result of the

expression it operates on.
 For example, if the expression evaluates to a non-
zero value, then applying ! operator to it results into
a 0 and vice versa.
 If the expression evaluates to zero then on applying !
operator to it makes it 1, a non-zero value. The final
result (after applying !) 0 or 1 is considered to be
false or true respectively.
 For Example ! ( y < 10 ), y is less than 10, the ! Operator
returns false.

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 The ! Operator

 The NOT operator is often used to reverse the

logical value of a single variable, as in the
expression
if ( ! flag )

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 Identify the error from the
following???

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 Conditional Operator
 The conditional operators ? and : are sometimes
called ternary operators since they take three
arguments.
 They form a kind of foreshortened if-then-else.
 Their general form is,
expression 1 ? expression 2 : expression 3
 What this expression says is:
 “If expression 1 is true (that is, if its value is non-zero), then
the value returned will be expression 2, otherwise the value
returned will be expression 3”.

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 Examples
 The following program store 3 in y, if x is
greater than 5, otherwise it will store 4 in y.

 The comparison with if else is as under,

Equivalent to

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 Example

 1 would be assigned to y if a >=65 && a <=90

evaluates to true, otherwise 0 would be assigned

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 Important point
 It’s not necessary that the conditional operators
should be used only in arithmetic statements. This is
illustrated in the following examples:

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 Cont…
 The conditional operators can be nested as
shown below.

 Check out the following conditional expression:

a>b?g=a:g=b;

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 Limitation

 The limitation of the conditional operators is

that after the ? Or after the : only one C
statement can occur.
 In practice rarely is this the requirement.
 Therefore, in serious C programming conditional
operators aren’t as frequently used as the if-else.

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 Limitations

 The limitation of the conditional operators is

that after the ? or after the : only one C
statement can occur.
 Therefore, in serious C programming conditional
operators aren’t as frequently used as the if-
else.

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