Question

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To ternary or not to ternary?

Today, while reading through my C book I stumbled upon a little gem: the ? operator. It is a ternary operator that acts like an if else statement based on weather or not a statement is true or false.

Apparently using the ? operator is supposed to be more efficient.

The following code uses an if / else statement (assuming somefunc returns NULL on failure):

foo = somefunc();
if(foo) printf("\nFunction Suceeded!");
else printf("\nFunction Failed!");

This is code is the same as the first but uses the ? operator:

somefunc() ? printf("\nFunction Suceeded!") : printf("\nFunction Failed!");

I can see how this will not be useful most of the time, however I know I’ve seen countless instances where this could have been easily used in place of an if / else statement.

Is it good practice to use this method?

Answer 1

Efficiency aside, you should use whichever is more readable.

Efficiency included, if the ? were really more efficient, the compiler would definitely automatically rewrite any if statements to ? expressions. Why wouldn’t it?