How do you use the ? : (conditional) operator in J

Question

Can someone please explain to me in simple words what is the ?: (conditional, "ternary") operator and how to use it?

Answer 1

It is called the ternary operator

tmp = (foo==1 ? true : false);

Answer 2

Hey mate just remember js works by evaluating to either true or false, right?

let's take a ternary operator :

questionAnswered ? "Awesome!" : "damn" ;

First, js checks whether questionAnswered is true or false.

if true ( ? ) you will get "Awesome!"

else ( : ) you will get "damn";

Hope this helps friend :)

Answer 3

It's called the ternary operator. For some more info, here's another question I answered regarding this:

How to write an IF else statement without 'else'

Answer 4

This is probably not exactly the most elegant way to do this. But for someone who is not familiar with ternary operators, this could prove useful. My personal preference is to do 1-liner fallbacks instead of condition-blocks.

  // var firstName = 'John'; // Undefined
  var lastName = 'Doe';

  // if lastName or firstName is undefined, false, null or empty => fallback to empty string
  lastName = lastName || '';
  firstName = firstName || '';

  var displayName = '';

  // if lastName (or firstName) is undefined, false, null or empty
  // displayName equals 'John' OR 'Doe'

  // if lastName and firstName are not empty
  // a space is inserted between the names
  displayName = (!lastName || !firstName) ? firstName + lastName : firstName + ' ' + lastName;


  // if display name is undefined, false, null or empty => fallback to 'Unnamed'
  displayName = displayName || 'Unnamed';

  console.log(displayName);

Ternary Operator

Answer 5

 (sunday == 'True') ? sun="<span class='label label-success'>S</span>" : sun="<span class='label label-danger'>S</span>";

 sun = "<span class='label " + ((sunday === 'True' ? 'label-success' : 'label-danger') + "'>S</span>"

Answer 6

z = (x == y ? 1 : 2);

is equivalent to

if (x == y)
    z = 1;
else
    z = 2;

except, of course, it's shorter.