What does short-circuit evaluation mean for logical operators?

• A. Both operands are always evaluated.
• B. In A && B, if A is false, B is not evaluated; in A || B, if A is true, B is not evaluated.
• C. The second operand is always evaluated first.
• D. It applies only to bitwise operators.

Answer: (B)

Short-circuit evaluation means the overall boolean value can be determined before both operands are evaluated. In a logical AND, if the first operand is false, the whole expression must be false, so the second operand isn’t evaluated. In a logical OR, if the first operand is true, the whole expression is true, so the second operand isn’t evaluated. This behavior lets the program skip unnecessary work and can matter when the second operand has side effects or is expensive to compute. The other statements don’t describe this pattern: both operands are not always evaluated, the second operand isn’t always evaluated first, and short-circuiting is a property of logical operators (not limited to bitwise operators).