Ternary conditional operator

In computer programming, the ternary conditional operator is a ternary operator that is part of the syntax for basic conditional expressions in several programming languages. It is commonly referred to as the conditional operator, ternary if, or inline if (abbreviated iif). An expression a ? b : c evaluates to b if the value of a is true, and otherwise to c. One can read it aloud as "if a then b otherwise c". The form a ? b : c is by far and large the most common, but alternative syntaxes do exist; for example, Raku uses the syntax a ?? b !! c to avoid confusion with the infix operators ? and !, whereas in Visual Basic .NET, it instead takes the form If(a, b, c).

"?:" redirects here. For use as a binary operator, see Elvis operator.

It originally comes from CPL, in which equivalent syntax for e1 ? e2 : e3 was e1 → e2, e3.

Although many ternary operators are possible, the conditional operator is so common, and other ternary operators so rare, that the conditional operator is commonly referred to as the ternary operator.

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