Else Statement

What Does Else Statement Mean?

In programming languages, an else statement is an alternative statement that is executed if the result of a previous test condition evaluates to false.

Techopedia Explains Else Statement

The syntax of the else statement is very similar between different high-level programming languages like PHP, Java, C/C++/C#, Object Pascal, etc. Even early programming languages such as Basic and Fortran have the ability to process an else statement as part of a general syntactical approach to linear programming.

The else statement is an optional statement that is normally used in an "if-else" or "if-else if-else" construction. The way the else statement works is that, if the condition associated with either the "if" or the "else if" control structure is false, program control automatically goes to the else statement, if present.

For example,

 If X is true Then

 Do Something

 Else

 Do Another Thing

 End If

Or

 If X = 1 Then

 Do Statement 1

 Else If X = 2 Then

 Do Statement 2

 Else

 Do Another Thing

 End If

Note that, unlike the "if" and "else if" control structure, there is no test condition associated with the else statement.

In Object Pascal, the else statement may also be used in a "case" statement and it serves the same purpose as the "default statement" in the C family of languages such as C/C++, C# and Java.