or
People say "or" to offer a choice. It connects two options and asks for one of them.
What a model may hear
- Boolean logical OR programming and digital logic
- Return true if at least one condition is true, and may short-circuit evaluation
- Bitwise OR low-level programming and networking
- Combine binary digits by setting a bit to 1 if either operand has that bit set
- SQL OR operator databases and queries
- Broaden a search to match any of multiple conditions, often changing result size dramatically
- Regular expression alternation pattern matching and text processing
- Match either the pattern before or after the pipe-like symbol, with order affecting priority
Where people and models part ways
“A or B”
Meant: Pick whichever of A or B works better
May be taken as: Treat as a logical operation that returns true/false rather than selecting an option
Say instead: “Choose the better of A or B, or explain why neither works”
“Do X or Y”
Meant: Do one of these, I do not care which
May be taken as: Execute both in sequence due to short-circuit misunderstanding, or reject as ambiguous
Say instead: “Do exactly one of X or Y, whichever you can complete first”
“Red or blue”
Meant: I am deciding between these two colors
May be taken as: Interpret as a bitwise operation on color values, or as a regex matching either string
Say instead: “Help me choose between red and blue for this purpose”
Tips
- Say "choose between" instead of bare "or" when you want a selection
- Say "either" explicitly if you truly want only one result
- Avoid "or" in file names, search queries, or code examples you do not want evaluated logically
- When listing options, number them so the model knows these are alternatives not operations
- If you mean inclusive or exclusive choice, say so directly
Often confused with
- and
- requires both, not either
- xor
- exclusive or, exactly one must be true
- nor
- neither, the negation of or
- ||
- symbol form, often short-circuits in code
- union
- set operation, returns all elements from either
- else
- fallback when first option fails, not parallel choice