& <-- verifies both operands
&& <-- stops evaluating if the first operand evaluates to false since the result will be false
(x != 0) & (1/x > 1)
<-- this means evaluate (x != 0)
then evaluate (1/x > 1)
then do the &. the problem is that for x=0 this will throw an exception.
(x != 0) && (1/x > 1)
<-- this means evaluate (x != 0)
and only if this is true then evaluate (1/x > 1)
so if you have x=0 then this is perfectly safe and won't throw any exception if (x != 0) evaluates to false the whole thing directly evaluates to false without evaluating the (1/x > 1)
.
EDIT:
exprA | exprB
<-- this means evaluate exprA
then evaluate exprB
then do the |
.
exprA || exprB
<-- this means evaluate exprA
and only if this is false
then evaluate exprB
and do the ||
.