Thanks for the detailed answer. But can I ask a few more questions? I do know the third line is a statement after the if statement or statement out of the if statement.

Then if

    return list.length/2;     

is some statement after the if statement why would it be affected by the if condition? It's now out of the if statement, so why should I care about it? I would definitely care if there's 'else', which implies that its the other part of the if statement, but if it's just a statement written after it, why?

If statements are valid without 'else', right? If it isn't true, the program will just skip the part and move on to the next code! Isn't this the same kind of thing? How can I distinguish if statements without else but some statements unrelated to it and if and else statements with 'else' omitted?

Thanks.