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Ternary Operator in C Language - Codzify Tutorials

1 min 55 sec read

What are Conditional Operators ?

The conditional operators ? and : are sometimes called ternary operators since they take three arguments. In fact, they form a kind of foreshortened if-then-else. It is very easy to understand Ternary Operator in C . Consider the following syntax below for better understanding,

Syntax :-

 expression 1 ? expression 2 : expression 3 

What this expression says is: "if expression 1 is true (that is, if its value is non-zero), then the value returned will be expression 2, otherwise the value returned will be expression 3"

It's equivalent if statement will look like this

 if(expression 1)
    {
    expression 2;
    }
    else
    {
    expression 3;
    }

Example :-

/* Copyright @codzify 2017 */
#import <stdio.h>
#import <conio.h>

void main( ) {
int a , b;

   a = 10;
   printf( "Value of b is %d\n", (a == 1) ? 20: 30 );

   printf( "Value of b is %d\n", (a == 10) ? 20: 30 );

Output :-

Value of b is 30
Value of b is 20

Short Description of Example :-

(a == 1) ? 20: 30

Firtsly a == 1 is being evaluated but since a=10 condition becomes false so output will be 30.

(a == 10) ? 20: 30

Firtsly a == 10 is being evaluated but since a=10 condition becomes true so output will be 20 :)

It's equivalent if statement will look like this

  a = 10;
  if(a == 1 ) 
      printf("20");       --Just for understanding 
  else
      printf("30") ; 

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