Ternary Operators in C/C++

The operators, which require three operands to act upon, are known as ternary operators. It can be represented by “ ? : ”. It is also known as conditional operator. The operator improves the performance and reduces the line of code.

Here is the syntax of ternary operator in C language,

Expression1 ? Expression2 : Expression3

Here is an example of Ternary Operators in C language,

Example

 Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   int a = -1;
   double b = 26.4231;
   int c = a? printf("True value : %lf",b):printf("False value : 0");
   return 0;
}

Output

True value : 26.423100

Expression1 will evaluate always while expression2 & expression3 are dependent on the outcome of expression1. If the outcome of expression1 is non-zero or negative, expression2 will display, otherwise expression3 will display.

The ternary operator has a return type. The return type depends on expression2 and also on the convertibility of expression3 to expression2. If they are not convertible, the compiler will throw an error.

Here is another example of ternary operator in C language,

Example

 Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   int x = -1, y = 3;
   double b = x+y+0.5;
   int c = x<y? printf("True value : %lf",b):printf("False value : 0");
   return 0;
}

Output

True value : 2.500000