Conditional Operator

Conditional operators (also known as ternary operators) allow a programmer to check: if (x is more than 10 and eggs is less than 20 and x is not equal to a...).

Most operators compare two variables; the one to the left, and the one to the right. However, C++ also has a ternary operator (sometimes known as the conditional operator), ?: which chooses from two expressions based on the value of a condition expression. The basic syntax is:

 condition-expression ? expression-if-true : expression-if-false

If condition-expression is true, the expression returns the value of expression-if-true. Otherwise, it returns the value of expression-if-false. Because of this, the ternary operator can often be used in place of the if expression.

• For example:

int foo = 8;
std::cout << "foo is " << (foo < 10 ? "smaller than" : "greater than or equal to") << " 10." << std::endl;

The output will be "foo is smaller than 10.".