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JavaScript JavaScript Basics (Retired) Making Decisions with Conditional Statements Combining Multiple Tests Into a Single Condition

Posted by Elizabeth Eymann
Elizabeth Eymann
12,209 Points

Understanding the "Or operator"

Hello!

I am very confused by the example given in this video for the "or operator".

Dave gives this example: say you want a user on your website to be able to type in either "yes" or "y" to agree to the website terms.

So you would write this:

(agree === 'yes' || agree ==='y')

The "Or operator" asks "is condition 1 true? Or is condition 2 true?"

agree === 'yes' : true agree === 'y' : false

In this case, 'yes' is true so that's enough. The entire statement is true.

But what if the user types 'y'. And we know that 'y' is FALSE, so how does that allow the statement to be true and thus allow the user to proceed on our website?

Thanks, Liz

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

What do you mean?

1 Answer

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

If 'y' was entered then agree === 'y' would be true. The example in the video shows how the conditions would be evaluated in the scenario where the user answered 'yes'.

It was shown to illustrate that only one of the conditions provided need to be true in order for the if statement to run when you use the OR operator.