If the language supports expressions with side effects but does not specify short-circuit evaluation, then a further distinction exists about which expression evaluates first-if the language guarantees any specific order (bear in mind that the conditional also counts as an expression).įurthermore, if no order is guaranteed, a distinction exists about whether the result is then classified as indeterminate (the value obtained from some order) or undefined (any value at all at the whim of the compiler in the face of side effects, or even a crash). The detailed semantics of 'the' ternary operator as well as its syntax differs significantly from language to language.Ī top level distinction from one language to another is whether the expressions permit side effects (as in most procedural languages) and whether the language provides short-circuit evaluation semantics, whereby only the selected expression is evaluated (most standard operators in most languages evaluate all arguments). Īlthough many ternary operators are possible, the conditional operator is so common, and other ternary operators so rare, that the conditional operator is commonly referred to as the ternary operator. It originally comes from CPL, in which equivalent syntax for e 1 ? e 2 : e 3 was e 1 → e 2, e 3. NET, it instead takes the form If(a, b, c).

The form a ? b : c is by far and large the most common, but alternative syntaxes do exist for example, Raku uses the syntax a ? b !! c to avoid confusion with the infix operators ? and !, whereas in Visual Basic. One can read it aloud as 'if a then b otherwise c'. An expression a ? b : c evaluates to b if the value of a is true, and otherwise to c.

It is commonly referred to as the conditional operator, ternary if, or inline if (abbreviated iif).

In computer programming, the ternary conditional operator is a ternary operator that is part of the syntax for basic conditional expressions in several programming languages.

For use as a binary operator, see Elvis operator.

Javascript conditional