In case you don’t know what the ternary operator is and want a thorough explanation you can read this article.

If you want a quick refresher, the ternary operator (?) is a very compact way to do an assignment that depends on an if-else statement. For example

string result = "";
if (DoSomething()){
  result = "Do Something worked";
}
else {
  result = "Do Something didn't work";
}

Can be summarized using the ternary operator to

string result = DoSomething() ? "Do Something worked" : "Do Something didn't work";

The first time I saw this in my early programming days I honestly didn’t like it.  I would even admit that I thought other people used it in their code so they could feel “cool”.

As I’ve gotten more experienced in programming (and lazy) it has definitely won a place in my heart. You don’t have to type as much which makes code smaller and a lot easier to read.

 

What are your thoughts? Do you use this operator or would you rather just do a if-else?