<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Concordance Programming Fundamentals > Using Conditional Statements and Loops > Conditional Operators

The first step in constructing an if-statement is a conditional. A conditional can be whether something equals something else, whether something is greater than something else, and so on. The operators you use to perform a comparison are very similar to the ones used in mathematics.

Note: do not confuse the double equals sign with the single equals sign. Use the double equals sign (==) when comparing a value. Use the single equal sign (=) when assigning a value.

The following example checks if the variable age contains a value greater than or equal to 21.

The following example check if the companyName variable contains "CloudNine".

Note the use of double quotes to encapsulate a piece of text (called a string).

Finally, CPL allows you to use numerical values as a trigger for a conditional statement, as shown in the following table

This allows you to use variables and function return values as conditional operators. For example, you may see code similar to the following:

This code states "if the return value of someFunction() is non-zero, execute the following code." This allows you to create functions that check for information and perform some task; if that task was successful, you can use a conditional statement to act on it.