What is the difference between & and && in Java?

Question

I always thought that && operator in Java is used for verifying whether both its boolean operands are true, and the & oper

Answer 1

It depends on the type of the arguments...

For integer arguments, the single ampersand ("&")is the "bit-wise AND" operator. The double ampersand ("&&") is not defined for anything but two boolean arguments.

For boolean arguments, the single ampersand constitutes the (unconditional) "logical AND" operator while the double ampersand ("&&") is the "conditional logical AND" operator. That is to say that the single ampersand always evaluates both arguments whereas the double ampersand will only evaluate the second argument if the first argument is true.

For all other argument types and combinations, a compile-time error should occur.