What is the difference between the | and || or operators in C#?

| Operator

The | operator computes the logical OR of its operands. The result of x | y is true if either x or y evaluates to true. Otherwise, the result is false.

The | operator evaluates both operands even if the left-hand operand evaluates to true, so that the operation result is true regardless of the value of the right-hand operand.

|| Operator

The conditional logical OR operator ||, also known as the "short−circuiting" logical OR operator, computes the logical OR of its operands.

The result of x || y is true if either x or y evaluates to true. Otherwise, the result is false. If x evaluates to true, y is not evaluated.

Example

class Program {
   static void Main(string[] args){
      int a = 4;
      int b = 3;
      int c = 0;
      c = a | b;
      Console.WriteLine("Line 1 - Value of c is {0}", c);
      Console.ReadLine();
   }
}

Output

Value of c is 7
Here the values are converted to binary
4−−100
3−−011
Output 7 −−111

Example 2

static void Main(string[] args){
   int a = 4;
   int b = 3;
   int c = 7;
   if (a > b || b > c){
      System.Console.WriteLine("a is largest");
   } else {
      System.Console.WriteLine("a is not largest");
   }
   Console.ReadLine();
}

Output

a is largest

Here in the above example one of the condition return true so it never bothers to check the next condition.