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The dangling else is a problem in programming of parser generators in which an optional else clause in an if–then(–else) statement results in nested conditionals being ambiguous. Formally, the reference context-free grammar of the language is ambiguous , meaning there is more than one correct parse tree .
If-then-else flow diagram A nested if–then–else flow diagram. In computer science, conditionals (that is, conditional statements, conditional expressions and conditional constructs) are programming language constructs that perform different computations or actions or return different values depending on the value of a Boolean expression, called a condition.
For example, to pass conditionally different values as an argument for a constructor of a field or a base class, it is impossible to use a plain if-else statement; in this case we can use a conditional assignment expression, or a function call. Bear in mind also that some types allow initialization, but do not allow assignment, or even that the ...
A common example of ambiguity in computer programming languages is the dangling else problem. In many languages, the else in an If–then(–else) statement is optional, which results in nested conditionals having multiple ways of being recognized in terms of the context-free grammar.
nested blocks of imperative source code such as nested if-clauses, while-clauses, repeat-until clauses etc. information hiding: nested function definitions with lexical scope; nested data structures such as records, objects, classes, etc. nested virtualization, also called recursive virtualization: running a virtual machine inside another ...
Note that nesting #if functions like this gets very resource-intensive very fast. On some wikis, even seven levels of nesting might exceed resource limits. See the discussion of #ifeq for how to detect whether a parameter has been defined regardless of whether its value is true or false.
In this example, because someCondition is true, this program prints "1" to the screen. Use the ?: operator instead of an if-then-else statement if it makes your code more readable; for example, when the expressions are compact and without side-effects (such as assignments).
A demonstration that the nested IF-THEN-ELSE—the "case statement" (or "switch statement")--is primitive recursive can be found in Kleene 1952:229 [4] at "#F ('mutually-exclusive predicates')". The CASE operator behaves like a logical multiplexer and is simply an extension of the simpler two-case logical operator sometimes called AND-OR-SELECT ...