Alternatively referred to as a conditional expression and conditional processing, a conditional statement is a set of rules performed if a certain condition is met. It is sometimes referred to as an If-Then statement, because IF a condition is met, THEN an action is performed.
For example, consider the following textual example of a conditional statement.
The example above is how a conditional statement might be interpreted by the human brain. Using a computer programming language, the conditional statement above could be written like the example statements below.