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rubyconditional-operator
nurettin
nurettin

Reputation: 11736

Does ruby need ternary operator at all?

I made a small test today:

> false && 1 || 2
> 2
> true && 1 || 2
> 1

So if we could already do with binary operators, why did we need a ternary ?

> false ? 1 : 2
> 2
> true ? 1 : 2
> 1

As it is not simply an alias and complicates parsing.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 138

Answers (3)

Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag

Reputation: 369428

The conditional operator is needed in languages like C, because if/else is a statement, it doesn't evaluate to a return value. But in Ruby, everything is an expression, everything has a return value, there are no statements.

Therefore, you can always replace the conditional operator with a conditional expression:

foo = bar ? baz : qux

is exactly equivalent to 

foo = if bar then baz else qux end

In C, you cannot write this, you'd have to write

if bar then foo = baz else foo = aux end

leading to code duplication. That's why you need the conditional operator in C. In Ruby, it is unnecessary.

Actually, since Ruby is an object-oriented language, all conditionals are unnecessary. You can just use polymorphism instead.

Upvotes: 1

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 943142

To deal with the specific case in your question…

What if 1 was different value, one that evaluated as false?

And in general:

No. You can always replace a ternary operator with an if/else construct. That isn't as convenient though.

Upvotes: 3

Dave Newton
Dave Newton

Reputation: 160170

No language needs a ternary operator.

The ternary operator is a well-known language construct. IMO people generally expect it in script-ish(-looking) languages, so there it is. I don't see a huge reason to not have it.

Upvotes: 1

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