Or operator

The 'or' operator comes in handy when you want to check if one of the listed values is a certain value.

If Statement

soul = true
food = false
try = false

if soul == true or food == true or try == true then -- If any of the three comparisons are met, then continue with the code block
    print 'soul is always true'
end


Output:
> soul is always true

Choice of Value

The 'or' operator can also be used to choose an existent value of a value that is nil or false. Here are some examples:

local y = x or 1
print(y)
> 1

This printed '1' because variable 'x' doesn't exist and is therefore nil. So the or operator allowed us to choose 1 over nil.

local x = false
local y = x or 1
print(y)
> 1

This also printed '1' because although 'x' exists, it is false. If 'x' were true, then 'y' would be true because the 'or' operator would choose 'y' because it is not false and not nil.

See Also

And operator

Conditional statements