Difference Between && and & Operators in Scala

1. Use the Logical && Operator in Scala
2. Use the Bitwise & Operator in Scala

This article will discuss the difference between && and & operators in Scala. The && and & are both conditional operators used to test any logical expression that requires two operands and return either true or false, a Boolean value based on the expression result.

The & operator is a logical and bitwise operator, as it operates on both Booleans and binary data. The && operator is a logical operator that works only on Boolean data type in Scala.

The & operator evaluates both sides of the expression to get the final result. If the first expression returns false, the && operator will evaluate only the left side of the expression and doesn’t evaluate the right side of the expression.

Use the Logical && Operator in Scala

We are comparing some integer values using the && operator. It returns either true or false.

object MyClass {
    def main(args: Array[String]) {
        var a = 10
        var b = 20
        var c = 10
        if(a==b && a==c)
            print("All the values are equal")
        else 
            print("Not equal")
    }
}

Output:

Not equal

Use the Bitwise & Operator in Scala

We use the bitwise operator & to compare some integer values. It also returns true if both the values are true.

object MyClass {
    def main(args: Array[String]) {
        var a = 10
        var b = 20
        var c = 10
        if(a==b & a==c)
            print("All the values are equal")
        else 
            print("Not equal")
    }
}

Output:

Not equal

This is the best way to check the difference between these(&& and &) operators. The && operator is also known as the short circuit operator as it does not check the second expression if the first is already false.

Here, we increment the value of the b variable by 1 to check whether the compiler executes the second expression or not and see the output is the same as expected.

object MyClass {
    def main(args: Array[String]) {
        var a=4
        var b=5;
        println((a == 6) && ((b=b+1) == 6));
        println("b= "+b);
    }
}

Output:

false
5