What is the OR operator in an IF statement

|| is the conditional OR operator in C#

You probably had a hard time finding it because it's difficult to search for something whose name you don't know. Next time try doing a Google search for "C# Operators" and look at the logical operators.

Here is a list of C# operators.

My code is:

if (title == "User greeting" || "User name") {do stuff};

and my error is:

Error 1 Operator '||' cannot be applied to operands of type 'bool' and 'string' C:\Documents and Settings\Sky View Barns\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\FOL Ministry\FOL Ministry\Downloader.cs 63 21 FOL Ministry

You need to do this instead:

if (title == "User greeting" || title == "User name") {do stuff};

The OR operator evaluates the expressions on both sides the same way. In your example, you are operating on the expression title == "User greeting" (a bool) and the expression "User name" (a string). These can't be combined directly without a cast or conversion, which is why you're getting the error.

In addition, it is worth noting that the || operator uses "short-circuit evaluation". This means that if the first expression evaluates to true, the second expression is not evaluated because it doesn't have to be - the end result will always be true. Sometimes you can take advantage of this during optimization.

One last quick note - I often write my conditionals with nested parentheses like this:

if ((title == "User greeting") || (title == "User name")) {do stuff};

This way I can control precedence and don't have to worry about the order of operations. It's probably overkill here, but it's especially useful when the logic gets complicated.

The OR operator is a double pipe:

||

So it looks like:

if (this || that) 
{
  //do the other thing
}

EDIT: The reason that your updated attempt isn't working is because the logical operators must separate valid C# expressions. Expressions have operands and operators and operators have an order of precedence.

In your case, the == operator is evaluated first. This means your expression is being evaluated as (title == "User greeting") || "User name". The || gets evaluated next. Since || requires each operand to be a boolean expression, it fails, because your operands are strings.

Using two separate boolean expressions will ensure that your || operator will work properly.

title == "User greeting" || title == "User name"

Just for completeness, the || and && are the conditional version of the | and & operators.

A reference to the ECMA C# Language specification is here.

From the specification:

3 The operation x || y corresponds to the operation x | y, except that y is evaluated only if x is false.

In the | version both sides are evaluated.

The conditional version short circuits evaluation and so allows for code like:

if (x == null || x.Value == 5)
    // Do something 

Or (no pun intended) using your example:

if (title == "User greeting" || title == "User name") 
    // {do stuff} 

you need

if (title == "User greeting" || title == "User name") {do stuff};

Or is ||

And is &&

Update for changed question:

You need to specify what you are comparing against in each logical section of the if statement.

if (title == "User greeting" || title == "User name") 
{
    // do stuff
}

The conditional or operator is ||:

if (expr1 || expr2) {do stuff}

if (title == "User greeting" || title == "User name") {do stuff}

The conditional (the OR) and it's parts are boolean expressions.

MSDN lists the C# operators in precedence order here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6a71f45d.aspx . And the MSDN page for boolean expressions is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dya2szfk.aspx .

If you are just starting to learn programming, you should read up on Conditional Statements from an introductory text or tutorial. This one seems to cover most of the basics: http://www.functionx.com/csharp/Lesson10.htm .

See C# Operators for C# operators including OR which is ||

The reason this is wrong:

if (title == "User greeting" || "User name") {do stuff};

is because what that's saying is

If title equals the string "User greeting"

or just "User name" (not if title equals the string "User name"). The part after your or would be like writing

if ("User name")

which c# doesn't know what to do with. It can't figure out how to get a boolean out of "User name"

In C#9 we can now use the pattern combinators "or", "and" and "not" as an operator in an "is" condition check.

See this for more information.

So your code ...

if (title == "User greeting" || "User name") {do stuff}

... could be directly written as:

if(title is "User greeting" or "User name") {do stuff}

In the format for if

if (this OR that) 

this and that are expression not values. title == "aaaaa" is a valid expression. Also OR is not a valid construct in C#, you have to use ||.

You should use equal like

if (title.Equals("User greeting") || title.Equals("User name")) 
{ do stuff }