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How does the Ternary Operator work in C?
Why do we use the Ternary operator in C?
What is the syntax of the Ternary Operator in C?
What do people think about using the ternary '?' operator instead of ifelse?
Do you use it, how often, what are best practices concerning this way of writing conditional statements?
In C, the real utility of it is that it's an expression instead of a statement; that is, you can have it on the right-hand side (RHS) of a statement. So you can write certain things more concisely.
Some of the other answers given are great. But I am surprised that no one mentioned that it can be used to help enforce const correctness in a compact way.
Something like this:
const int n = (x != 0) ? 10 : 20;
so basically n is a const whose initial value is dependent on a condition statement. The easiest alternative is to make n not a const, this would allow an ordinary if to initialize it. But if you want it to be const, it cannot be done with an ordinary if. The best substitute you could make would be to use a helper function like this:
int f(int x) {
if(x != 0) { return 10; } else { return 20; }
}
const int n = f(x);
but the ternary if version is far more compact and arguably more readable.