Else If

if statements are not limited to two cases. You can combine an else and an if to make an else if and test a whole range of mutually exclusive possibilities. For instance, here's a version of the Hello program that handles up to four names on the command line:

// This is the Hello program in Java

class Hello {

    public static void main (String args[]) {
    
      if (args.length == 0) {
        System.out.println("Hello whoever you are");
      }
      else if (args.length == 1) {
        System.out.println("Hello " + args[0]);
      }
      else if (args.length == 2) {
        System.out.println("Hello " + args[0] + " " + args[1]);
      }      
      else if (args.length == 3) {
        System.out.println("Hello " + args[0] + " " + args[1] + " " + args[2]);
      }      
      else if (args.length == 4) {
        System.out.println("Hello " + args[0] +
          " " + args[1] + " " args[2] + " " + args[3]);
      }      
      else {
        System.out.println("Hello " + args[0] + " " + args[1] + " " args[2] 
         + " " + args[3] + " and all the rest!");
      }

  }

}

You can see that this gets mighty complicated mighty quickly. No experienced Java programmer would write code like this. There is a better solution and you'll explore it in the next section.