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Asked: 2026-05-14T18:38:06+00:00

EDITED FOR TYPO – How can I check one thing AND THEN another, if

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EDITED FOR TYPO –

How can I check one thing AND THEN another, if the first is true?

For example, say I have a shopping basket object, and I only want to do something if the basket has been created AND it isn’t empty.

I’ve tried:

if ((basket) && ([basket numberOfItems] >0))...

But the second condition is evaluated even if the first fails, resulting in a crash (presumably because i’m calling numberOfItems on an object that doesn’t exist).

I can nest them, but this seems a bit ugly, and more to the point is problematic. Say I want to do one thing if the basket exists AND isn’t empty, but another if either isn’t true. That doesn’t really work well in nested if statements.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If Objective-C is a strict superset of C (which, in my understanding, it is), then boolean evaluation short circuits with the && and || operators. This means that since you’re using &&, as soon as a condition fails, the remaining conditions are not even evaluated.

    Given your code, that means that if the object is null, then the message is never dispatched.

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