Question

What is the output of the following code segment?

int x = 5;
if (x = 2)
cout << "This is true!" << endl;
else
cout << "This is false!" << endl;
cout << "That's all, folks!" << endl;
a. This is true!
b. This is false!
c. This is false!
That's all, folks
d. This is true!
That's all folks
e. This is true!
This is false!
That's all, folks!

Answer 1

The code assigns 2 to x instead of checking for equality, causing the output to incorrectly display 'This is true!That's all, folks!' Correct usage of the equality operator would have been using == instead of =.

Step-by-step explanation:

The code segment provided contains an error. In C++, the if statement requires a conditional expression that evaluates to true or false. However, the code uses a single equals sign (=) which is the assignment operator, not the equality operator (==). So instead of evaluating whether x is equal to 2, it assigns the value 2 to x. This assignment is an expression that always evaluates to true because it returns the assigned value, which is non-zero (and in C++, any non-zero value is considered true).

Therefore, the output of the code will incorrectly display This is true! followed by That's all, folks! If the equality operator == was used, the output would have been This is false! because x would not be equal to 2.

The correct output is:

d. This is true!
That's all, folks!