Using else if to make complex decisions

So far, we have learned how to decide what code we want to execute if certain conditions are met. Using if and else, we can decide what code is executed out of two parts. You are probably wondering, "What if I have many more complex decisions to make and need to be able to choose between more than two code blocks?" Yes, good question!

The else if expression is an expression that you can add after the code block belonging to the first if statement. Don't worry, it's not complicated. Let's take another example. Imagine you are driving a car and you need to check the speed limit and decide what speed you want to drive at:

Let's analyze the code:

• Line 9: This line declares the speedLimit number variable and assigns a value of 60.
• Line 11: The if statement checks whether the speedLimit variable is exactly 70. As we have assigned speedLimit as 60, the statement in line 11 is false, so line 12 won't be executed.
• Line 14: The compiler will check this statement whenever the statement directly before else is false. Don't panic, it sounds very confusing now. All you need to know at the moment is that the else if statement is checked only if the previous statement isn't true.
• Line 17: Analogically, line 17 is checked only if line 14 is false.

Of course, you can nest if statements inside each other. The syntax would look exactly the same. Simply write your new child if statement between the curly brackets of the parent statement.