Question

I’m doing some small program for a beginners programming course and in my program I have 2 variables which hold numbers. Anyway I need to find out which number is bigger and print the appropriate message according to it, for example I have:

int x = 5;
int y = 10;

I need to print:

“it is true that y is bigger than x”;

Now the thing is that I know I can use a simple if statement but I’m not allowed to use it, now it makes me wonder, is it even possible? If so, how can I do that? How can I check which number is bigger WITHOUT doing something like:

if (x > y) 
    answer = true;

…

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Well you can do:

boolean answer = x > y;

The expression x > y is just an expression of type boolean. While boolean expressions are often used for conditions in if statements, loops etc, they don’t have to be – simple assignment works fine too.

It sounds like you want the reverse though:

boolean answer = y > x;

Then you can use the value of answer to build the string to display…