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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 can make nested conditional statements 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.
The detailed semantics of "the" ternary operator as well as its syntax differs significantly from language to language. A top level distinction from one language to another is whether the expressions permit side effects (as in most procedural languages) and whether the language provides short-circuit evaluation semantics, whereby only the selected expression is evaluated (most standard ...
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).
Nesting can mean: nested calls: using several levels of subroutines; recursive calls; nested levels of parentheses in arithmetic expressions; 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
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.
The most vexing parse is a counterintuitive form of syntactic ambiguity resolution in the C++ programming language. In certain situations, the C++ grammar cannot distinguish between the creation of an object parameter and specification of a function's type. In those situations, the compiler is required to interpret the line as a function type ...
The else clause in the above example is linked to the for statement, and not the inner if statement. Both Python's for and while loops support such an else clause, which is executed only if early exit of the loop has not occurred. Some languages support breaking out of nested loops; in theory circles, these are called multi-level breaks.