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copied!<p>The following code <em>is</em> legal:</p> <pre><code>int x = 5; int y = 2; int z = 0; if (x == y) z = x * y; else z = y - x; </code></pre> <p>As Sean Bright mentioned, your problem is that you are trying to test a non-boolean expression. You should be using the <code>==</code> operator instead of the <code>=</code> operator in your <code>if</code> clause.</p> <p>Another thing to mention is that it is considered, by many, bad practice to skip using the curly braces in an <code>if-then-else</code> statement. It can lead to errors down the road, such as adding another statement to the body of the <code>if</code> or <code>else</code> code blocks. It's the type of bug that might be a pain to figure out.</p> <p>This isn't really an issue when using an <code>if-else</code> statement, because Java will catch this as a syntactic error (<code>else</code> statement without a preceding <code>if</code>). However, consider the following <code>if</code> statement:</p> <pre><code>if (x == y) z = y * x; </code></pre> <p>Now, suppose later on you need to do more things if <code>x == y</code>. You could easily do the following without realizing the error.</p> <pre><code>if (x == y) z = y * x; w = x * y - 5; </code></pre> <p>Of course, the second statement <code>w = x * y - 5</code> will be executed regardless of the outcome of the <code>if</code> statement test. If you had curly braces to begin with, you would have avoided the problem.</p> <pre><code>if (x == y) { z = y * x; w = x * y - 5; // this is obviously inside the if statement now } </code></pre>

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