Question

Here we have a long-standing assumption that needs to be cleared up in my head. Is the following an example of nesting ‘if’ statements:

if (...)
  ...;
else if (...)
  ...;

I was under the impression that nesting required an ‘if’ inside another ‘if’, like so:

if (...)
  if (...)
    ...;

or at least a clear separation of scope when you nest inside an else, like so:

if (...)
  ...;
else { //if the next statement didn't 
       //exist, then the curly brace changes nothing?
  ...;
  if (...)
    ...;
}

This might boil down to how the compiler interprets things, whether the ‘if’ in else-ifs are considered in the same level as the parent if, or whether they create “new” ‘if’ statements. Thank you for your time!

edit: I ask because I am a TA in a java lab, and the topic of the day was nested-ifs. In the end, I found out that the teacher considered my first example to be valid for “nested if statements”.

Answer 1

This is an if statement:

if (condition1) {
    // ...
}

This is a nested if statement:

if (condition1) {
    // ...
    if (condition2) {
        // ...
    }
    // ...
}

This is an if-else statement:

if (condition1) {
    // ...
} else {
    // ...
}

This is a chained if-else statement:

if (condition1) {
    // ...
} else if (condition2) {
    // ...
}