Question

I was looking to see if it’s possible to set multiple variables with one ternary operator. I google’d a bit, but didn’t come up with anything. I started testing a few ideas, and found something close — but also getting some strange behavior; any ideas as to what’s going on? And, is it possible to set more than one var in a single ternary operation? If so, is there a proper way of doing it?

$i=9;
($i==9)?($w=3|$r=2):($w=7|$r=1);
echo 'w= '.$w.' r= '.$r;//w= 3 r= 2


$i=9;
($i==9)?($w=4|$r=2):($w=7|$r=1);
echo 'w= '.$w.' r= '.$r;//w= 6 r= 2


$i=9;
($i==9)?($w=3|$r=7):($w=7|$r=1);
echo 'w= '.$w.' r= '.$r;//w= 7 r= 7


$i=444;
($i==9)?($w=4|$r=2):($w=7|$r=1);
echo 'w= '.$w.' r= '.$r;//w= 7 r= 1


$i=444;
($i==9)?($w=4|$r=2):($w=1|$r=1);
echo 'w= '.$w.' r= '.$r;//w= 1 r= 1 

Thanks…

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Edit:

I did a little more testing, and found that this works correctly:

    ($i==9)?($w=4 AND $r=7):($w=7 AND $r=1);

however, I’m not sure if this is correct. And I’m curious as to what’s going on in the first example.

Answer 1

As Chadwick has explained, using the AND or OR logical operators will not work the way you want them to:

$i = 0; $w = 0; $r = 0;
($i==9) ? ($w=4 AND $r=7) : ($w=7 AND $r=1);
echo "w = $w, r = $r\n";
// w = 7, r = 1

$i = 0; $w = 0; $r = 0;
($i==9) ? ($w=0 AND $r=7) : ($w=0 AND $r=1);
echo "w = $w, r = $r\n";
// w = 0, r = 0

However, if you really want to make multiple assignments in one statement, you can use the list construct:

$i = 0; $w = 0; $r = 0;
($i==9) ?
    (list($w, $r) = array(4, 7)) :
    (list($w, $r) = array(7, 1));
echo "w = $w, r = $r\n";
// w = 7, r = 1

$i = 0; $w = 0; $r = 0;
($i==9) ?
    (list($w, $r) = array(0, 7)) :
    (list($w, $r) = array(0, 1));
echo "w = $w, r = $r\n";
// w = 0, r = 1