Question

In this answer : https://stackoverflow.com/a/4481896/1486928

there is a line like this :

 UITableView *tableView = controller == self.fetchedResultsController ? self.tableView : self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView;

It’s the first time I see all these symbols in the same line :/ (I’m a beginner).

Answer 1

This is the conditional operator. What it does is basically it returns one of two values based on its condition:

SomeType variable = condition ? valueIfTrue : valueIfFalse;

This can be interpreted as

SomeType variable;
if (condition) {
    variable = valueIfTrue;
} else {
    variable = valueIfFalse;
}

Here the condition is

controller == self.fetchedResultsController

so of the view controller is equal to self.fetchedResultsController, the tableView variable will be assigned to self.tableView, else it’ll be assigned to self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView