14.4

Statements

BLOCKS AND STATEMENTS

The problem is that both the outer

if

 statement and the inner

if

 statement might

conceivably own the

else

 clause. In this example, one might surmise that the pro 

grammer intended the

else

 clause to belong to the outer

if

 statement. The Java

language, like C and C++ and many languages before them, arbitrarily decree that

an

else

 clause belongs to the innermost

if

 to which it might possibly belong.

This rule is captured by the following grammar:

Statement:

StatementWithoutTrailingSubstatement

LabeledStatement

IfThenStatement

IfThenElseStatement

WhileStatement

ForStatement

StatementNoShortIf:

StatementWithoutTrailingSubstatement

LabeledStatementNoShortIf

IfThenElseStatementNoShortIf

WhileStatementNoShortIf

ForStatementNoShortIf

StatementWithoutTrailingSubstatement:

Block

EmptyStatement

ExpressionStatement

SwitchStatement

DoStatement

BreakStatement

ContinueStatement

ReturnStatement

SynchronizedStatement

ThrowStatement

TryStatement

The following are repeated from  14.8 to make the presentation here clearer:

IfThenStatement:

if (

Expression

 )

Statement

IfThenElseStatement:

if (

Expression

 )

StatementNoShortIf

 else

Statement

IfThenElseStatementNoShortIf:

if (

Expression

 )

StatementNoShortIf

 else

StatementNoShortIf

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