Defending the ternary operator

[Andrew Koenig]

Martin> David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

>> My impression is that a ternary operator is already used, often, in the 
>> guise of "x and y or z" or "[z,y][x]" or still worse 
>> "[lambda:y,lambda:z][not x]()". Introducing a true ternary operator 
>> might at least prevent programmers from committing such atrocities.

Martin> Better yet, it would save otherwise kind and compassionate
Martin> people from having to foist these wretches off on the innocent
Martin> who come to them for assistance.

LOL!!

>> But, programmers uninterested in writing readable code will anyway
>> find other ways to be unreadable.  What I am not sure about is
>> whether the gain in readability of code compared to the existing
>> ternary hacks is enough to outweigh the increase in cognitive
>> complexity of one more language feature.

Martin> But it's not an increase - it's a decrease.  You get one form
Martin> that is both safe and IMO far more readable in place of at
Martin> least three different ugly, sometimes unsafe, hacks.  (three
Martin> has to be a lower bound, since we've seen at least one
Martin> significant variation on all of the above just in recent
Martin> pre-308 discussion)

+1.

-- 
Andrew Koenig, ark at research.att.com, http://www.research.att.com/info/ark