Question

This seems stupid – must be me!

Say I had a string filter["size]" = "g1g" this actually reads “greater” “1” “gb”

so

I’ve done a test to see if “first” character is a character, and work out its greater
I’ve done a test to see if “last” character is a character, and work out its gb, or mb, or whatever

first and last are both boolean.

I then set x (cos I was getting stroppy) to length of filter[“size”] which is a string.

However, I’ve come to copy the final number(s) in the middle.

Int64.Parse(filter["size"].Substring(first?1:0,last?(first?x-2:x-1):x));

And it doesnt like the nested inline ifs..

Substring(first?1:0,last?(first?x-2:x-1)); complains that its missing the :, which is right, but the instant you add it it complains

Error   1   The best overloaded method match for 'string.Substring(int, int)' has some invalid arguments

Im beginning to think I should just have parsed it with regexpr, but now Im curious as to why this isnt working.

So, irrelevant of there could be a ton of better ways, can anyone tell me why these nested inline ifs dont work?

Answer 1

Your code is perfectly compilable as you’ve described it, if horrendously readable. Filling out your blanks, I tried this:

int x = 6;
bool first = false;
bool last = false;
var filter = new Dictionary<string, string>();
filter.Add("size", "12345697");
var result = Int64.Parse(filter["size"].Substring(first?1:0,last?(first?x-2:x-1):x));

This code results in result being set to 123456. No errors, no problems.

There is something wrong with your surrounding code; your ternary expressions are fine.