Ternary operator

The conditional (ternary) operator is often used as a short form of an if-else statement. This is simply a conditional assignment of a value to a variable. if-then-else, on the other hand, is a flow control.

condition ? expression1 : expression2;

Example: ternary operator

This code defines an integer variable age with a value of 15, and a string variable message. It then uses the ternary operator to set the value of message based on whether age is greater than 18.

The ternary operator condition ? value_if_true : value_if_false works by evaluating the condition before the ?. If the condition is true, it returns the value after the ?, otherwise it returns the value after the :. In this case, if age is greater than 18, the condition is true, so message is set to "you can drive". If age is not greater than 18, the condition is false, so message is set to "you are not allowed to drive a car".

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
    int age = 15;
    string message;
    
    message = age > 18 ? "you can drive" : "you are not allowed to drive a car";

    cout << message;

    return 0;
}

Output

you are not allowed to drive a car