Pine Script 'if' Statements: A Complete Guide to Conditional Logic for Buy Signals and Color Changes
Conditional logic is the backbone of any algorithmic trading script — without it, indicators and strategies cannot respond dynamically to market conditions. In Pine Script v6, the if statement provides a structured, deterministic mechanism to evaluate boolean expressions and execute specific branches of code, enabling everything from simple color changes to complex multi-condition buy/sell signal generation. 1. The Anatomy of an if Statement in Pine Script At its core, an if statement evaluates a boolean condition and executes a block of code only when that condition resolves to true . The general syntax follows this structure: //@version=6 // Basic if-else structure (conceptual) // if condition // // executed when condition is true // else // // executed when condition is false Pine Script uses indentation-based block scoping . Any statements belonging to an if branch must be consistently indented relative to the if key...