81 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
81 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Ternary Operator
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---
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## Ternary Operator
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Programmers use ternary operators in C for decision making inplace of conditional statements **if** and **else**.
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The ternary operator is an operator that takes three arguments. The first argument is a comparison argument, the second is the result upon a true comparison, and the third is the result upon a false comparison. If it helps you can think of the operator as shortened way of writing an if-else statement.
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Here's a simple decision-making example using **if** and **else**:
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```c
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int a = 10, b = 20, c;
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if (a < b) {
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c = a;
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}
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else {
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c = b;
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}
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printf("%d", c);
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```
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This example takes more than 10 lines, but that isn't necessary. You can write the above program in just 3 lines of code using the **ternary operator**.
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### Syntax
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`condition ? value_if_true : value_if_false`
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The statement evalutes to statement\_1 if the condition is true, and statement\_2 otherwise.
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Here's the above example re-written to use the ternary operator:
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```c
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int a = 10, b = 20, c;
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c = (a < b) ? a : b;
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printf("%d", c);
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```
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Output of the example should be:
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```c
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10
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```
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`c` is set equal to `a`, because the condition `a<b` was true.
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This looks pretty simple, right? Do note that `value_if_true` and `value_if_false` must have the same type, and they cannot be full statements but simply expressions.
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The ternary operator can be nested too same like nested if-else statements. Consider this nested if-else statement :
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```c
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int a = 1, b = 2, ans;
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if (a == 1) {
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if (b == 2) {
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ans = 3;
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} else {
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ans = 5;
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}
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} else {
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ans = 0;
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}
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printf ("%d\n", ans);
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```
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Here's the above code re-written using nested ternary operator:
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```c
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int a = 1, b = 2, ans;
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ans = (a == 1 ? (b == 2 ? 3 : 5) : 0);
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printf ("%d\n", ans);
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```
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The output of both of the above codes should be:
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```c
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3
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```
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