Ternary Operator in C++

February 18, 2023

What is ternary operator  in C++?

Here in this page we will discuss about Ternary Operator in C++ also known as conditional operator. The conditional operator is similar to the if-else statement in that it follows the same algorithm, but the conditional operator takes less space and helps to write the if-else statements in the shortest possible way.
ternary operator in Cpp

Ternary Operator in C++

The syntax of ternary operator is as follows:

(Test condition)? Statement1:Statement2

If the condition is true statement 1 is evaluated and if it is false, statement 2 is evaluated.

Understanding Syntax of Ternary operator 

The conditional operator is a decision-making operator whose statement is evaluated based on the test condition

Here, Test condition is evaluated and

  • if the condition is true, statement1 is executed.
  • And, if the condition is false, statement2 is executed.

The ternary operator takes 3 operands (Test condition , statement1 and statement2 ).

Hence, the name ternary operator.

Ternary-Operator

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Understaning the syntax

The syntax of conditional operator can be visualized as a if else statement as:-

variable=(Test condition)?Statement1:Statement2;

here the condition will be checked and if the condition is true then the Statement1 will be assigned to the variable and if the condition is false Statement2 will be assigned to the variable.

if (Test condition) {
    variable = Statement1 ;
} else {
    variable = Statement2 ;
}

Lets take a practical example to understand this. I the below code the value of age will be checked if the age is greater than or equal to 18 then the value of vote is eligible otherwise its not eligible.

Run 
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
  int age = 4;
  string vote;
  // Using ternary operator
  vote = (age >= 18) ? "Eligible" : "Not Eligible";
  cout << vote << endl;
  return 0;
}

Output:

Not Eligible

Nested Ternary Operator

Ternary operator can be nested i.e you can have a ternary operator inside another ternary operator.
Run 
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
    int a = 10, b = 20, c = 30, res;
    res = a > b ? (a > c ? a : c) : (b > c ? b : c);  // nesting of ternary operator
    cout << "maximum number is : " << res;
    return 0;
}

Output:

maximum number is : 30

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