Boolean Operations in a Programming Language

Boolean Operations Overview

A Boolean operation has a result which is either true or false.
They are named after George Boole, an English mathematician and logician who has made significant contributions to the field of computer science.
In programming, Boolean operations often represent decision points, where the direction of the code’s flow depends on a certain outcome.

AND: Also known as a logical conjunction, the AND Boolean operator returns true only if both its left-hand-side and right-hand-side conditions are true.
OR: Known as a logical disjunction, the OR Boolean operator returns true if either its left-hand-side or right-hand-side condition is true.
NOT: This is a logical negation operator that flips the Boolean value it is applied to. If the original value is true, NOT makes it false; if it’s false, NOT makes it true.

Boolean expressions are logical statements that are either True or False.
They use Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT, and form the basis of complex decision-making in a computer program.
For example, if you have two Boolean variables, A and B, the expression “A AND B” is only true if both A and B are true.

In Python code, the boolean operators are lowercase: and, or, not.
For instance, if a = True and b = False, then a and b would return False, a or b would return True, and not a would return False.

Truth tables are used to represent the results of all the possible variations of a Boolean operation. They are a fundamental tool for understanding and working with Boolean logic.
For example, for an AND operation with two variables A and B:

A B A AND B

True True True

True False False

False True False

False False False

Both AND and OR operations in programming use short-circuit evaluation. It’s useful for optimising code.
In short-circuit evaluation, the program stops evaluating as soon as it has enough information to determine the final Boolean value.
For example, if the first value in an AND operation is false, the program will not even check the second value because it already knows that the result will be false (as both values need to be true for AND operation to return true).

Boolean operations are essential in control structures such as if statements, for loops and while loops.
They also play a crucial role in conditional expressions and conditional assignments.

Remember, a solid understanding of Boolean logics is key to mastering control flow within a program.