Last lesson we learned about if else statements and how to get the computer to execute an else statement when the condition within our if statement is not met.  In this lesson, we will be going over how to create an else if statement that is linked to the if else statement we learned the lesson prior. 

All these if, if else, and else if statements can be a little confusing in the beginning, but once you see it in use and work through it a couple of times, you will easily be able to understand when and how to use them. 

The purpose of having an else if statement is to add another condition, if the prior conditional statement or statements are false.To demonstrate how the else if statement works, let’s look at the example shown below. 

The if and else statement in the program should look familiar from the previous lessons.  However, the 2nd statement that begins with the else if, you have not seen yet.  Luckily, the else if statement is identical to the if statement, except we just have to add an else before the if.  You can use an unlimited amount of else if statements for any condition you want to specify.

It should be noted that every else if statement must be preceded by a normal if statement (or another else if statement if you are using multiple else if statements..)

In the example, we can see that our first conditional statement returns a true/false value based on whether or not our favorite number is 1.  Next, we also added the else if statement for when our favorite number is 2.  However, if our favorite number is any number other than 1 or 2, our else statement will execute telling us that: Your favorite number isn’t 1 or 2.

If you don’t fully understand the code above, play with it and see how changing the favorite number variable gives you different outputs.  If you are unsure about any of the topics we went over this chapter, go back and review them. If statements are the backbone of many programs and an important tool to add to your programmer’s toolbox.

GitHub link.