+1 @tabstop
To the original poster, it's unclear if you're having problems with C++ syntax or the boolean logic itself. To answer one of your side questions, boolean logic is VERY important in programming, so yes it is quite important that you become comfortable with it.
These basic boolean operators accept arguments which can be thought of as statements or propositions (mathematical in nature). It is important that these statements passed as arguments have a clear TRUTH or FALSITY (these are called truth-values). Furthermore, each operator takes the propositions it's been given, and itself returns a truth-value.
AND, OR take two arguments apiece.
NOT takes only one proposition as an argument.
The computer uses 0 to represent FALSITY and non-zero numbers to represent TRUTH.
Code:
A AND B , denoted A && B returns TRUE if both A and B are true
A OR B , denoted A || B returns TRUE if one or both of A, B are true
NOT A , denoted A == 0 returns TRUE if A is a FALSITY
//based on the info I've given you, we could denote NOT A differently, and in fact we often use
//another syntax to avoid typing out " == 0 " ... can you work out how?
An IF statement works on the principle of IF->THEN statements from boolean algebra.
Code:
if( some_expression ){
// execute something desirable in here
}
The IF statement will only execute the code in the curly brackets if some_expression evalutes to a non-zero number.
Boolean logic may be studied independently of how computers represent it, and it might be easier for you to try some basic non-computer examples of logic puzzles before implementing it in a program. Such examples can be found by searching "logic" or "proposotional logic" or "propositional calculus" or "boolean" or "LSAT" or something like that on Google. Also, Google "DeMorgan's Law" afterwards... if you can wrap your head around that, you should be able to start using AND, OR, NOT, IF with some confidence.