Writing Java nested if statement for Excel nested if statement?

Question

I am trying to convert an excel nested IF statement into code language, but I am not sure if I am doing it correctly and was hoping I could get some help

Here is the excel statement :

=IF(D3="Feather",IF(OR(I3>1000,R3="n/a"),"",IF(W3="F","F",IF(AND(I3<=1000,R3>8),"F","P"))),"")

My code :

if( D3 == "Feature"){
   if (I3>1000 || R3 =="n/a") {

   } else if (W3=="F"){
       "F"  
   } else if( I3<=1000 && R3>8){
       "F"
   } else {
       "P"
   }
}

Thank you

The Java ternary operator (consisting of `?` and `:` characters) is a better match to the Excel `IF` function than a Java `if/else` construct. You might do well to read up on it. — Dawood ibn Kareem, Nov 24 '14 at 05:52
Thank you for the reply. But my problem is that I don't have much proficiency with excel statements, so I am not sure if I am interpreting correctly. I first need to understand the excel statement correctly before using the ternary operators — mg555, Nov 24 '14 at 06:07
I've re-opened this. It's really NOTHING LIKE the question that it was closed as a duplicate of. — Dawood ibn Kareem, Nov 24 '14 at 08:51

Dawood ibn Kareem · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-24T18:50:20.533

You have indeed interpreted the Excel formula correctly, but there are three things that stop your code from being "correct Java".

Expressions like "P", "F" and so on don't really have any effect sitting by themselves between { and }. The thing about the Excel formula is that it actually has a value; and that's something that a series of Java if and else statements don't actually have. If you want a value, you could either write all of this as a Java method that returns a value, or you could use the ternary operator ? : to create a single expression with the value that you desire.
To compare strings in Java, you almost always want to use the equals method, instead of the == operator. The reason is that two different String objects might have the same value; but in this case, == will return false for them, but equals will return true.
It's not clear what type R3 is. At one point, you treat it as if its type were String, and at another point, you treat it as a numeric variable. Unlike Excel formulas, any expression in Java has a well defined data type.

Translating the formula into a Java expression, and being careful of these three issues, we get something like this.

d3.equals("Feather") ? 
    ((i3 > 1000 || r3.equals("n/a")) ? "" : 
      w3.equals("F") ? "F" : 
      (i3 <= 1000 && Integer.parseInt(r3) > 8) ? "F" : "P" ) : ""

But this is a bit hard to read, because there are too many ternary operators. Most people would prefer to write this as a method, something like this.

public String excelFormula(String d3, int i3, String r3, String w3) {
    if (d3.equals("Feather")) {
        if (i3 > 1000 || r3.equals("n/a")) {
            return "";
        } else if (w3.equals("F")) {
            return "F";
        } else if (i3 <= 1000 && Integer.parseInt(r3) > 8) {
            return "F";
        } else {
            return "P";
        }
    } else {
        return "";
    }
}

Writing Java nested if statement for Excel nested if statement?

1 Answers1