Difference between && and &, || and |

Introduction
Hello everyone, in this article we will learn a very important and basic part of the AND and OR
operators. It is not dependent on the language; its just logic and optimization. As the title of the article
suggests, its all about two and and single and or two or and single or operators. So lets start.
Difference between && and &
&& is called the AND operator and & is also called the AND operator but the basic difference between
them is in the way they are executed. The syntax for && and & the same as in the following:

bool_exp1 && bool_exp2

bool_exp1 & bool_exp2

Now the syntax of 1 and 2 looks similar to each other but the way they will execute is entirely different.
In the first statement, first bool_exp1 will be executed and then the result of this expression decides the
execution of the other statement. If it is false then the AND will be false so it makes no sense to
execute the other statement. The bool_exp2 statement is executed if and only if bool_exp1 returns true
on execution. It is also known as the short circuit operator because it shorts the circuit (statement) on
the basis of the first expressions result. Lets understand this using an example.
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int x = 0;
if (5 < 4 && (7 / x) == 0)
MessageBox.Show("Won't execute!");
else
{
MessageBox.Show("&& wont execute the 7/0 so no divide by zero error.");
}
The output of the code above is:

Now in the case of & things are different. The compiler will execute both statements and then the result
will be ANDed. Its an inefficient way of doing things because it makes no sense to execute the other
statement if one is false because the result of AND is effective only for ANDing results evaluated to
true and its possible when both statements are true.
Example:
int x = 0;
if (5 < 4 & (7 / x) == 0)
MessageBox.Show("Won't execute!");
else
{
MessageBox.Show("&& wont execute the 7/0 so no divide by zero error.");
}

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Output:

Difference between || and |

Its the same as above, in the case of || only one statement is executed and if it returns true then
the other statement will not be executed. But if the first is false then the other will be checked for the
value true. The reason for this is the way the or operator works. The Or operator depends on only
one true, in other words if any of the expressions are true then the result will be true.
Example:

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int x = 0;
if (5 > 4 || (7 / x) == 0)
MessageBox.Show("|| executed because 5>4 evaluates to true.No divide by zero error.");
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Won't execute!");
}
Output:

Thats OK but the way | behaves is the same as that of &, in other words both statements are
executed regardless of the result of one statement. Check the following example and it will be clear.
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int x = 0;
if (5 > 4 | (7 / x) == 0)
MessageBox.Show("|| executed because 5>4 evaluates to true.No divide by zero error.");
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Won't execute!");
}
Output:

Summary
Thanks for reading this article. This article is just for information purposes, I wont recommend anyone
to use & or | instead of && or ||. Dont forget to comment and share this article.
Edit 1
As pointed out by Klaus Luedenscheidt in comment, This article doesn't deal with the original use of
'&' and '|' . These operators are very useful in performing bitwise operations. And also you can not use
'&&' and '||' for performing bitwise operations. I guess this is the only reason for their existence.
A sort example :

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printf("%d",4&5); //will print 4 because.

00001000 //4 in binary
00001001 //5 in binary
________ // Perform & (anding of bits)
00001000 //4 in binary
printf("%d",4|5); //will print 5 because
00001000 //4 in binary
00001001 //5 in binary
________ // Perform & ('Or'ing of bits)
00001001 //5 in binary

--if((i=45) & (j=getBool()) ) // Here you want both statements to execute, so you used &
In my opinion this is not a good way of writing the code. We should not change our variables during any
comparison. The above code will work perfectly because of '&' but in general it is not an expected way
of comparing.
Good way of writing the above code
i=45;
j=getBool();
if(i && j)
'&' and '|' are majorly used for bit wise operations.