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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

    Because Java’s if does not return a value,
    you cannot say:

      return if (x < 0) "-" else "+";

This would have been a nice place to make an analogy to the question mark operator, since a java programmer would probably be familiar with it and it allows you to write:

    return if (x < 0) "-" else "+";

    return x < 0 ? "-" : "+";

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>>java programmer would probably be familiar with it

And also C, C++, and Objective-C programmers. I'm sure there are more languages that use that operator that I have not mentioned here.

I have not touched PHP in the last 10 years but if memory serves it also has the ternary operator. Ok, lets try it:

    $ php -a
    Interactive mode enabled
    php > echo 1 == 1 ? "foo" : "bar";
    foo
    php > echo 1 == 2 ? "foo" : "bar";
    bar

Looks like javascript has it too:

    1 == 1 ? "foo" : "bar"
    "foo"
    1 == 2 ? "foo" : "bar"
    "bar"

Be careful, php’s ternary operator precedence is different from (most) other languages’ (consult binding direction).

The use of parenthesis is highly encouraged...

Sure, but the article is written with Java programmers in mind and doesn't mention any of the other languages.

It's called 'ternary operator' because it's `?` and `:` and takes three operands.

I don't like calling it the ternary operator because there are other ternary operators, like "x BETWEEN a AND b" in SQL.

Sometimes it's called the "conditional operator" but my experience has been that "question mark operator" is what the most people will understand.

If you're going to reference other languages, `?` is an operator on its own in Swift. Calling `?:` by the name 'question mark operator' is only naming half of the thing.

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