Ternary operator with a null in 2nd value

Question

Suppose, an if statement is like following

if(true) { doSomething() }

and I will write it as

true ? doSomething() : null

The result is same in both but there must be a difference in the purpose of both.

Could someone share their experience about

• what difference does null make . Is it a bad practice ?
• Is it future proof code because if I have to add a functionality in the future for an opposite case. I can just replace nullrather writing a complete else statement

PS: It does not make a big difference to write an else case either. So I hope answers or comments are not related to that.

Answer 1

Beyond that:

true ? doSomething() : null

will simply surprise most readers; no matter what programming language is used.

In that sense: this is a good example for a "bad" style; that is not helping the readability/clearness of your source code. Surprising your readers (in that sense) isn't a good idea:

Answer 2

if is a statement, a list of steps without an inherent value.

a ? b : c is an expression - it evaluates to the value of either b or c.

The ternary operator works well where you want to use the result of a conditional:

// After this line, `result` has either the return value of `doSomething` or `null`.
const result = value ? doSomething() : null

if works well where you don't need to use the result, you want to run several statements in any conditional branch or you want to chain several if/else if/else conditions.

In most languages You can chain ternary expressions them to mimic if/else if/else, but that can be quite hard to read.

Answer 3

The ternary operator is not an alternative to if (in many aspects). Even though you can write all sorts of hacks that imitate other kinds of code, I can't imagine any competent programmer would even think of using ternary here instead of the normal, perfectly readable and working if clause.

It should be noted that the ternary operator isn't a very powerful tool. It can allow you to write some code in a shorter way sometimes, but that's hardly a reason to try to use it everywhere possible.