Is order of conditional evalution garanteed?

[Derik Davenport]

Is there any garantee in java about the order of boolean evaluation for the AND statement?

Let me clarify my meaning. Consider the following code

if ((condition 1) && (condition 2)){
   // do stuff
}

In C, if condition 1 is false, the condition 2 will not be evaluated.

Consider the following Java example

int j = 0;
if ((myObject == null)  && (myObject.myMethod() != j++){
  // do stuff
}

In Java was like C, then if myObject == null, then I can be assured that the second condition will never be evaluated and thus it would be impossible for a NullPointerException to be thrown. I also know that the variable j will not have been incremented. Does this kind of logic hold for Java? Or does it depend on the implementation of the JVM?

[Paul Clapham]

It's documented in the Java Language Specification that it should work that way.

[Campbell Ritchie]

You need to be very careful about combining && (or ||) with side-effects like j++.
To elaborate on what you have already been told, I checked in the Java Language Specification for && (|| follows in the next section), and you now have the link to the actual page. And, good grief, I can actually understand that page of the JLS!

[Matthew Brown]

The other thing you can use, if you really want to confuse people, are the non-shortcircuiting boolean operators | and &. Then both conditions will be evaluated.