'AND' vs '&&' as operator

Question

I have a codebase where developers decided to use AND and OR instead of && and ||.

I know that there is a difference in operators' precedence (&& goes before and), but with the given framework (PrestaShop to be precise) it is clearly not a reason.

Which version are you using? Is and more readable than &&? Or is there no difference?

Answer 1

If you use AND and OR, you'll eventually get tripped up by something like this:

$this_one = true;
$that = false;

$truthiness = $this_one and $that;

Want to guess what $truthiness equals?

If you said false... bzzzt, sorry, wrong!

$truthiness above has the value true. Why? = has a higher precedence than and. The addition of parentheses to show the implicit order makes this clearer:

($truthiness = $this_one) and $that

If you used && instead of and in the first code example, it would work as expected and be false.

As discussed in the comments below, this also works to get the correct value, as parentheses have higher precedence than =:

$truthiness = ($this_one and $that)

Answer 2

Depending on how it's being used, it might be necessary and even handy. http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.logical.php

// "||" has a greater precedence than "or"

// The result of the expression (false || true) is assigned to $e
// Acts like: ($e = (false || true))
$e = false || true;

// The constant false is assigned to $f and then true is ignored
// Acts like: (($f = false) or true)
$f = false or true;

But in most cases it seems like more of a developer taste thing, like every occurrence of this that I've seen in CodeIgniter framework like @Sarfraz has mentioned.

Answer 3

Since and has lower precedence than = you can use it in condition assignment:

if ($var = true && false) // Compare true with false and assign to $var
if ($var = true and false) // Assign true to $var and compare $var to false

Answer 4

For safety, I always parenthesise my comparisons and space them out. That way, I don't have to rely on operator precedence:

if( 
    ((i==0) && (b==2)) 
    || 
    ((c==3) && !(f==5)) 
  )

Answer 5

Precedence differs between && and and (&& has higher precedence than and), something that causes confusion when combined with a ternary operator. For instance,

$predA && $predB ? "foo" : "bar"

will return a string whereas

$predA and $predB ? "foo" : "bar"

will return a boolean.

Answer 6

Let me explain the difference between “and” - “&&” - "&".

"&&" and "and" both are logical AND operations and they do the same thing, but the operator precedence is different.

The precedence (priority) of an operator specifies how "tightly" it binds two expressions together. For example, in the expression 1 + 5 * 3, the answer is 16 and not 18 because the multiplication ("*") operator has a higher precedence than the addition ("+") operator.

Mixing them together in single operation, could give you unexpected results in some cases I recommend always using &&, but that's your choice.

---

On the other hand "&" is a bitwise AND operation. It's used for the evaluation and manipulation of specific bits within the integer value.

Example if you do (14 & 7) the result would be 6.

7   = 0111
14  = 1110
------------
    = 0110 == 6

Answer 7

Another nice example using if statements without = assignment operations.

if (true || true && false); // is the same as:
if (true || (true && false)); // TRUE

and

if (true || true AND false); // is the same as:
if ((true || true) && false); // FALSE

because AND has a lower precedence and thus || a higher precedence.

These are different in the cases of true, false, false and true, true, false. See https://ideone.com/lsqovs for en elaborate example.

Answer 8

which version are you using?

If the coding standards for the particular codebase I am writing code for specifies which operator should be used, I'll definitely use that. If not, and the code dictates which should be used (not often, can be easily worked around) then I'll use that. Otherwise, probably &&.

Is 'and' more readable than '&&'?

Is it more readable to you. The answer is yes and no depending on many factors including the code around the operator and indeed the person reading it!

|| there is ~ difference?

Yes. See logical operators for || and bitwise operators for ~.

Answer 9

I guess it's a matter of taste, although (mistakenly) mixing them up might cause some undesired behaviors:

true && false || false; // returns false

true and false || false; // returns true

Hence, using && and || is safer for they have the highest precedence. In what regards to readability, I'd say these operators are universal enough.

UPDATE: About the comments saying that both operations return false ... well, in fact the code above does not return anything, I'm sorry for the ambiguity. To clarify: the behavior in the second case depends on how the result of the operation is used. Observe how the precedence of operators comes into play here:

var_dump(true and false || false); // bool(false)

$a = true and false || false; var_dump($a); // bool(true)

The reason why $a === true is because the assignment operator has precedence over any logical operator, as already very well explained in other answers.

Answer 10

Here's a little counter example:

$a = true;
$b = true;
$c = $a & $b;
var_dump(true === $c);

output:

bool(false)

I'd say this kind of typo is far more likely to cause insidious problems (in much the same way as = vs ==) and is far less likely to be noticed than adn/ro typos which will flag as syntax errors. I also find and/or is much easier to read. FWIW, most PHP frameworks that express a preference (most don't) specify and/or. I've also never run into a real, non-contrived case where it would have mattered.