Question

There are a few ways to do this in javascript.

Foremost and most readable and flexible is probably:

if (a){     //b } else {     //c } 

Something else that only* works with assigning and is less readable is:

var foo = 'c'; if (a){     foo = 'b'; } 

My main question, though, is about the last two methods I can think of:

var foo = a ? b : c;  var foo = a && b || c; 

Are there any differences between these two expressions? Other than the readability which both lack.

*although you could assign foo to be a function, then execute it after the if statement.

Answer 1

Suppose:

var a = false, b = '', c = 'bar'; 

Then:

var foo = a ? b : c; // foo == '' var foo = a && b || c; // foo == 'bar' 

The two are not equivalent; you should never use the boolean operators in place of the conditional operator. Like other answerers, I also am of the opinion that the conditional operator does not lack readability for simple expressions.