Interested in expressing a lot using minimal words. Well, Ternary Operator comes as saviour. Its a conditional operator which works with three operands.

To put in simple words, its a one line replacement for if-then-else statement. It helps to ensure that the code is concise without impacting its readability.

Syntax

condition ? :

The above syntax is a booelan expression which evalautes the above condition as either True or False. If evaluated True, then "expression-if-True" is evaluated else "expression-if-False" is evaluated.

Lets take an example to

if (condition) {

doThis();
}else {
doThat();
}
// can be also expressed as
condition ? doThis() : doThat();

Ternary Operartor as Expression

Since the Ternary operator is an expression, it can therefore be used at the right hand side of an assignment statement.

Lets have a look at the following example. Here a variable can be assigned a value based on the boolean condition.

int speedLimit = isHighway() ? 80 : 40;

Lets take another example, here we can see it helps reduce multiple return statements.

int speedLimit() {

if (isHighway()) {

  return 80;  
}  

else {
return 40;
}
}

// can be also expressed as

int speedLimit() { return isHighway() ? 80 : 40;}