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As the title says, I am wondering about the use of nested ternary operators (and ternary operators in general) and their use.
EDIT: To be clear about what I mean, I am refering to the ?: expression or bool ? expr1 : expr2
EDIT2: I have been told it is called a conditional operator. Sorry for any confusion.
The statement as written could be improved if rewritten as follows....
good = m_seedsfilter==0 ? true :
m_seedsfilter==1 ? newClusters(Sp) :
newSeed(Sp);
...but in general you should just become familar with the ternary statement. There is nothing inherently evil about either the code as originally posted, or xanatos' version, or mine. Ternary statements are not evil, they're a basic feature of the language, and once you become familiar with them, you'll note that code like this (as I've posted, not as written in your original post) is actually easier to read than a chain of if-else statements. For example, in this code, you can simply read this statement as follows: "Variable good equals... if m_seedsfilter==0, then true, otherwise, if m_seedsfilter==1, then newClusters(Sp), otherwise, newSeed(Sp)."
Note that my version above avoids three separate assignments to the variable good, and makes it clear that the goal of the statement is to assign a value to good. Also, written this way, it makes it clear that essentially this is a "switch-case" construct, with the default case being newSeed(Sp).
It should probably be noted that my rewrite above is good as long as operator!() for the type of m_seedsfilter is not overridden. If it is, then you'd have to use this to preserve the behavior of your original version...
good = !m_seedsfilter ? true :
m_seedsfilter==1 ? newClusters(Sp) :
newSeed(Sp);
...and as xanatos' comment below proves, if your newClusters() and newSeed() methods return different types than each other, and if those types are written with carefully-crafted meaningless conversion operators, then you'll have to revert to the original code itself (though hopefully formatted better, as in xanatos' own post) in order to faithfully duplicate the exact same behavior as your original post. But in the real world, nobody's going to do that, so my first version above should be fine.
UPDATE, two and a half years after the original post/answer: It's interesting that @TimothyShields and I keep getting upvotes on this from time to time, and Tim's answer seems to consistently track at about 50% of this answer's upvotes, more or less (43 vs 22 as of this update).
I thought I'd add another example of the clarity that the ternary statement can add when used judiciously. The examples below are short snippets from code I was writing for a callstack usage analyzer (a tool that analyzes compiled C code, but the tool itself is written in C#). All three variants accomplish exactly the same objective, at least as far as externally-visible effects go.
1. WITHOUT the ternary operator:
Console.Write(new string(' ', backtraceIndentLevel) + fcnName);
if (fcnInfo.callDepth == 0)
{
Console.Write(" (leaf function");
}
else if (fcnInfo.callDepth == 1)
{
Console.Write(" (calls 1 level deeper");
}
else
{
Console.Write(" (calls " + fcnInfo.callDepth + " levels deeper");
}
Console.WriteLine(", max " + (newStackDepth + fcnInfo.callStackUsage) + " bytes)");
2. WITH the ternary operator, separate calls to Console.Write():
Console.Write(new string(' ', backtraceIndentLevel) + fcnName);
Console.Write((fcnInfo.callDepth == 0) ? (" (leaf function") :
(fcnInfo.callDepth == 1) ? (" (calls 1 level deeper") :
(" (calls " + fcnInfo.callDepth + " levels deeper"));
Console.WriteLine(", max " + (newStackDepth + fcnInfo.callStackUsage) + " bytes)");
3. WITH the ternary operator, collapsed to a single call to Console.Write():
Console.WriteLine(
new string(' ', backtraceIndentLevel) + fcnName +
((fcnInfo.callDepth == 0) ? (" (leaf function") :
(fcnInfo.callDepth == 1) ? (" (calls 1 level deeper") :
(" (calls " + fcnInfo.callDepth + " levels deeper")) +
", max " + (newStackDepth + fcnInfo.callStackUsage) + " bytes)");
One might argue that the difference between the three examples above is trivial, and since it's trivial, why not prefer the simpler (first) variant? It's all about being concise; expressing an idea in "as few words as possible" so that the listener/reader can still remember the beginning of the idea by the time I get to the end of the idea. When I speak to small children, I use simple, short sentences, and as a result it takes more sentences to express an idea. When I speak with adults fluent in my language, I use longer, more complex sentences that express ideas more concisely.
These examples print a single line of text to the standard output. While the operation they perform is simple, it should be easy to imagine them as a subset of a larger sequence. The more concisely I can clearly express subsets of that sequence, the more of that sequence can fit on my editor's screen. Of course I can easily take that effort too far, making it more difficult to comprehend; the goal is to find the "sweet spot" between being comprehensible and concise. I argue that once a programmer becomes familiar with the ternary statement, comprehending code that uses them becomes easier than comprehending code that does not (e.g. 2 and 3 above, vs. 1 above).
The final reason experienced programmers should feel comfortable using ternary statements is to avoid creating unnecessary temporary variables when making method calls. As an example of that, I present a fourth variant of the above examples, with the logic condensed to a single call to Console.WriteLine(); the result is both less comprehensible and less concise:
4. WITHOUT the ternary operator, collapsed to a single call to Console.Write():
string tempStr;
if (fcnInfo.callDepth == 0)
{
tempStr = " (leaf function";
}
else if (fcnInfo.callDepth == 1)
{
tempStr = " (calls 1 level deeper";
}
else
{
tempStr = " (calls " + fcnInfo.callDepth + " levels deeper";
}
Console.WriteLine(new string(' ', backtraceIndentLevel) + fcnName + tempStr +
", max " + (newStackDepth + fcnInfo.callStackUsage) + " bytes)");
Before arguing that "condensing the logic to a single call to Console.WriteLine() is unnecessary," consider that this is merely an example: Imagine calls to some other method, one which takes multiple parameters, all of which require temporaries based on the state of other variables. You could create your own temporaries and make the method call with those temporaries, or you could use the ternary operator and let the compiler create its own (unnamed) temporaries. Again I argue that the ternary operator enables far more concise and comprehensible code than without. But for it to be comprehensible you'll have to drop any preconceived notions you have that the ternary operator is evil.
The equivalent non-evil code is this:
if (m_seedsfilter == 0)
{
good = true;
}
else if (m_seedsfilter == 1)
{
good = newClusters(Sp);
}
else
{
good = newSeed(Sp);
}
Chained ternary operators - that is, the following
condition1 ? A : condition2 ? B : condition3 ? C : D
- are a great way to make your code unreadable.
I'll second @phonetagger's suggestion that you become familiar with ternary operators - so that you can eliminate nested ones when you encounter them.
Welcome to Stack Overflow,
There isn't nested ternary operators in C++, but you can combine them;
return firstcondition ? a : (secondcondition ? b : c);
or without redundant parantheses;
return firstcondition ? a : secondcondition ? b : c;
it is same with;
if (firstcondition) {
return a;
} else {
if (secondcondition) {
return b;
} else {
return c;
}
}
also, you can write it like;
if (firstcondition) {
return a;
} else if (secondcondition) {
return b;
} else {
return c;
}
If you want to use nested ternary operator, you should understand its purpose.
- You should use it, while assigning some values to variables.
- On the other hand, if-else statement can be used for other things.
While, I would insist you not to use ternary for complex or multiple operations, but, since you need it, here it may help you.
A normal ternary statement:
int c = (a1>a2) ? a1:a2;
Its, if-else equivalent will be,
if(a1>a2){
c = a1;
}
else {
c = a2;
}
Now, a complex operation,
A if-else statement to find the leap year
if (year % 400 == 0) {
cout<<"Leap Year";
}
else if (year % 100 == 0) {
cout<<"Not a leap Year";
}
else if (year % 4 == 0) {
cout<<"Leap Year";
}
else {
cout<<"Not a leap Year";
}
Now the same using ternary operator,
(year%4==0 && year%100!=0) ? cout<<"Leap Year" : (year%400 ==0 ) ? cout<<"Leap Year" : cout<<"not a leap year";
C is defined by a language grammar; a precedence table is a handy condensing of the grammar into something that humans can take in at a glance, but it doesn't exactly correspond to what the grammar specifies.
You may need to consult the language grammar in order to resolve associativity around a ternary operator. Personally I always explicitly use parentheses so that a reader who's not a language lawyer can still understand what's going on (and so that I don't make mistakes).
An example is:
c ? c = a : c = b
which must be parsed as
(c ? c = a : c) = b
which is illegal in C, since the ternary operator does not give an lvalue. Incidentally, the C++ grammar is different; in that language this is parsed as
c ? c = a : (c = b)
which is legal; and also the ternary operator can give an lvalue in C++.
In your case, the question is which of the following it is:
Z = ((i , j) ? X : Y)
Z = (i , (j ? X : Y))
(Z = i, j) ? X : Y
(Z = i), (j ? X : Y)
I believe the latter is correct here, so you should end up with j = i plus an expression with no side-effect.
What you have here is hopefully code you have read and you want to get rid of, not code you actually use.
You have a combination of two unparenthesed ternay operators and two uses of the comma operator.
Despite no use of parentheses, the nesting of ?: is unambiguous:
a ? b ? c : d : e
can only mean
a ? ( b ? c : d) : e
as there is no other way to interpret it.
The 2nd comma operator is in parentheses, so it is unambiguous as well.
The only point of doubt is the comma operator at the start, where you might want to consult a precedence table.
Here we see that , has the lowest precedence and thus we have
(j = i), (j ? (i, j) ? i : j : j);
which is a comma operator with an assignment as first expression and an unevaluated other expression as second expression, which is the result.
In short, if we omit the right side, which isn't used nevertheless, we just have j = i, but this expression lacks unreadability.
So the output is 10 10.
Great trap, this expression... but as it is written, the answer doesn't cover this. If I erroneously evaluated it as j = j ? i : j; I would get 10 10 as well.