|| (OR) and && (AND) are left-associative, meaning their parameters are evaluated from left to right. If the first value resolves to true in an OR operation (||) or false in an AND operation (&&), the overall result is determined immediately to be the same. In such cases, what is known as short-circuiting occurs. This means that the second argument is not evaluated because it is unnecessary.This feature can be conveniently exploited, for example, to check for null in a single line:
return param != null && param.getBoolMember();
However, this can sometimes lead to unexpected bugs, especially if the second argument is a function with side effects rather than a simple variable. For situations where short-circuiting is undesirable, the non-short-circuiting versions of these operators are used:
| and &. These are logical variants of "bitwise OR" and "bitwise AND".Additionally, the "exclusive or" operator
^ is available. It is rarely used for boolean parameters though, because it is functionally equivalent to the more intuitive !=. Other bitwise operators are not applicable for logical arguments.