Question

How can I craft a one-liner return line that also has conditionals? For example, if I want to make a ‘return the median’ one:

//assuming sorted input array
return ((inputArray.length % 2) && (inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)] + inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1]) / 2) || inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1];

Is there anyway to make this work?

Answer 1

You should use the ternary operator:

return (inputArray.length % 2 != 0) ? (inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)] + inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1]) / 2 : inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1];

Which is equivalent to:

if (inputArray.length % 2 != 0) {
    return (inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)] + inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1]) / 2;
} else {
    return inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1];
}

If you want to use only && and ||, you can use the following (which is not really a good programming style):

((inputArray.length % 2 != 0) || return inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1]) && return (inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)] + inputArray[int(inputArray.length/2)+1]);

Which is equivalent to:

(condition || return value2) && return value1;

So, thanks to the short-circuit evaluation of boolean operators:

• if condition is true, return value2 is not evaluated and return value1 will be executed.
• if condition is false, return value2 will be evaluated.