The if-then Statement

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Lua journey — lesson 40 of 90.

The if-then-end statement is the foundation of conditional logic in Lua.

An if statement allows your program to execute code only when a specific condition is true. Here's the basic syntax:

if condition then
    -- code to run if condition is true
end

The condition can be any expression that evaluates to true or false. If the condition is true, the code inside the block runs. If it's false, the code is skipped entirely.

Here's a practical example:

local score = 85

if score > 80 then
    print("Great job!")
end

In this case, since 85 is greater than 80, the condition score > 80 evaluates to true, so "Great job!" will be printed. If the score were 75, nothing would happen because the condition would be false.

Challenge

Easy

Create a simple achievement system that checks if a player's score qualifies for a congratulations message. Declare a variable called playerScore and assign it the value 95. Use an if-then-end statement to check if the score is greater than 90. If the condition is true, print the message "Congratulations! You achieved a high score!".

Cheat sheet

The if-then-end statement executes code only when a condition is true:

if condition then
    -- code to run if condition is true
end

Example with a comparison:

local score = 85

if score > 80 then
    print("Great job!")
end

The condition can be any expression that evaluates to true or false. If true, the code block executes; if false, it's skipped.

Try it yourself

-- Declare the playerScore variable
local playerScore = 95

-- TODO: Write your code here to check if the score is greater than 90
-- Use an if-then-end statement and print the congratulations message