Use of Conditional Operator

The conditional operator (?) and (:) are sometimes called ternary operators since they take three arguments. In fact, they form a kind of foreshortened if-then-else. Their general form is,

expression 1 ? expression 2 : expression 3

What this expression says is: “if expression 1 is true (that is if its value is non-zero), then the value returned will be expression 2, otherwise the value returned will be expression 3”.

Example of Conditional Operator

Let us understand this with the help of an example:

int x, y ; 
scanf ( "%d", &x ) ; 
y = ( x > 5 ? 3 : 4 ) ; 

This statement will store 3 in y if x is greater than 5, otherwise, it will store 4 in y.

The equivalent if statement will be.

if ( x > 5 ) 
    y = 3; 
else 
    y = 4; 

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