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MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Web › JavaScript › Reference › Operators › Conditional_operator
Conditional (ternary) operator - JavaScript | MDN
The conditional (ternary) operator is the only JavaScript operator that takes three operands: a condition followed by a question mark (?), then an expression to execute if the condition is truthy followed by a colon (:), and finally the expression to execute if the condition is falsy.
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com › en-us › dotnet › csharp › language-reference › operators › conditional-operator
?: operator - the ternary conditional operator - C# reference | Microsoft Learn
January 24, 2026 - The condition expression must evaluate to true or false. If condition evaluates to true, the consequent expression is evaluated, and its result becomes the result of the operation.
Discussions

Five pieces of my advice on implementing the ternary conditional `?:` operator in your programming language
I decided to not have ternary conditionals in my language and keep it simple. Ifs are expressions anyway, so... More on reddit.com
🌐 r/ProgrammingLanguages
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April 15, 2025
Ternary Operator
I generally use it for a conditional assignment, where a variable will have one of two values based on some condition. I probably wouldn't chain them, though. Also, I like to enclose the condition in parentheses, even though it isn't required. It helps me to parse it as a condition instead of the result of the expression. This is just how I use the operator, though, and my own practices shouldn't be taken as gospel. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/C_Programming
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May 14, 2023
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › c language › conditional-or-ternary-operator-in-c
Conditional or Ternary Operator (?:) in C - GeeksforGeeks
July 12, 2025 - The conditional operator can be in the form · variable = Expression1 ? Expression2 : Expression3; Or the syntax can also be in this form · variable = (condition) ? Expression2 : Expression3; Or syntax can also be in this form · (condition) ? (variable = Expression2) : (variable = Expression3); Conditional/Ternary Operator in C ·
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Stan
mc-stan.org › docs › 2_23 › reference-manual › conditional-operator-section.html
6.6 Conditional Operator - Stan Reference Manual
Stan’s conditional operator works very much like its C++ analogue. The first argument must be an expression denoting an integer. Typically this is a variable or a relation operator, as in the variable a in the example above.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/programminglanguages › five pieces of my advice on implementing the ternary conditional `?:` operator in your programming language
r/ProgrammingLanguages on Reddit: Five pieces of my advice on implementing the ternary conditional `?:` operator in your programming language
April 15, 2025 -
  1. Make sure it is parsed correctly like a right-associative operator, rather than as in PHP.

  2. Make sure the first operand is being executed before the second and the third operand. Otherwise, some user of your language might end up writing d==0?0:1/d as an attempt to protect themselves from a divide-by-zero error, but it will still lead to an error if d iz zero. That error happened to me in the AEC-to-x86 compiler.

  3. Make sure your compiler outputs a sensible error message in case the user accidentally puts structures of different types as the second and the third operand. Early versions of my AEC-to-WebAssembly compiler outputted a completely nonsensible error message in that case.

  4. If you will support labels with a C-like syntax, be sure to use a good algorithm for determining whether a colon belongs to a label or to a ternary conditional operator.

  5. If you are making an assembler, make sure your assembler doesn't crash if the second and the third operands are labels. Somebody might end up writing something like jump NDEBUG ? continue_with_the_program : print_debug_information.

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Quora
quora.com › What-is-a-conditional-operator
What is a conditional operator? - Quora
Answer (1 of 13): A conditional operator in a programming language helps us to execute a set of commands on the basis of few conditions . For example: let us consider two int a and b , say we want to check whether the value of a is equal to b or not . In such a case we can use a conditional oper...
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › js › js_if_ternary.asp
W3Schools.com
The conditional operator is a shorthand for writing conditional if...else statements.
Find elsewhere
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Javatpoint
javatpoint.com › conditional-operator-in-c
Conditional Operator in C - javatpoint
Conditional Operator in C with Tutorial, C language with programming examples for beginners and professionals covering concepts, c array, c pointers, c structures, c union, c strings etc.
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MDN Web Docs
developer.mozilla.org › en-US › docs › Web › JavaScript › Reference › Operators › Logical_AND
Logical AND (&&) - JavaScript | MDN
The logical AND (&&) (logical conjunction) operator for a set of boolean operands will be true if and only if all the operands are true. Otherwise it will be false.
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ScienceDirect
sciencedirect.com › topics › computer-science › conditional-operator
Conditional Operator - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
C's conditional operator, which is also called the tertiary operator, lets one use the logic of an if statement inside an expression. The syntax of the conditional operator is difficult.
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ThoughtCo
thoughtco.com › conditional-operator-2034056
Discover How Conditional Operators Are Used in Java
July 12, 2019 - Conditional operators evaluate conditions to return true or false based on boolean expressions.
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Scaler
scaler.com › home › topics › conditional operator in c
Conditional Operator in C - Scaler Topics
June 23, 2024 - One common way to employ the conditional operator is as follows: This structure is straightforward, where variable is assigned valueIfTrue if the condition evaluates to true, and valueIfFalse otherwise. Alternatively, the syntax can be elaborated to explicitly encompass the condition within parentheses:
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FastBit
fastbitlab.com › home › microcontroller embedded c programming lecture 92| conditional operator
Conditional Operators in C(?:) : Syntax, Evaluation, and Examples
April 12, 2024 - The first operand is followed by a question mark (?), and the second operand is followed by a colon(:), and after that comes the third operand. Here, if expression1 is true, then expression2 is executed; if expression1 is false, then expression3 ...
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JavaScript.info
javascript.info › tutorial › the javascript language › javascript fundamentals
Conditional branching: if, '?'
Sometimes it’s called “ternary”, because the operator has three operands. It is actually the one and only operator in JavaScript which has that many. The syntax is: let result = condition ?
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Oracle
docs.oracle.com › javase › › tutorial › java › nutsandbolts › op2.html
Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Language Basics)
Another conditional operator is ?:, which can be thought of as shorthand for an if-then-else statement (discussed in the Control Flow Statements section of this lesson). This operator is also known as the ternary operator because it uses three operands. In the following example, this operator should be read as: "If someCondition is true, assign the value of value1 to result.
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Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Conditional_operator
Ternary conditional operator - Wikipedia
November 10, 2025 - The construct first appeared in CPL, in which equivalent syntax for a ? b : c is a → b, c. The value of the operator can be assigned to a variable. For a weakly typed language, the data type of the selected value may determine the type of the assigned value. For a strongly typed language, both value expressions must evaluate to a type that is compatible with the target variable. The operator is similar to the way conditional expressions (if-then-else) work in functional programming languages, like Scheme, ML, Haskell, and XQuery, since if-then-else forms an expression instead of a statement in those languages.
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com › en-us › cpp › cpp › conditional-operator-q
Conditional Operator: ?: | Microsoft Learn
December 7, 2021 - The conditional operator (? :) is a ternary operator (it takes three operands).
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Tutorialspoint
tutorialspoint.com › home › cplusplus › c++ conditional operator
C++ Conditional Operator
March 13, 2011 - The ? is called a ternary operator because it requires three operands and can be used to replace if-else statements, which have the following form −