Ternary operator alternate to IF in JAVA

Java has an operator that can be used as an alternative to if statement. You are familiar with this operator, the conditional operator ?: This operator can be used to replace if-else statements of the general forms:

if (expression)
Statement 1;
else
Statement 2;

The above forms of if can be alternatively written using conditional operator as follows:

expression? statement 1 : statement 2;

It works in the same way as the above given form of if does i.e., expression is evaluated, if it is true, statement 1 gets executed (i.e. its value becomes the value of entire expression) otherwise statement 2 gets executed (i.e. its value now becomes the value of the entire expression). Look out following example:

int c;
if (a > b)
c = a;
else
c = b;

Can be alternatively written as:

int c = a > b ? a : b;

The whole code fragment converts into a single line.

Comparing if and ?:

• Compared to if-else sequence, ?: offers more concise, clean and compact code, but it is less obvious as compared to if.
• Another difference is that the conditional operator ?: produces an expression, and hence a single value can be assigned or incorporated into a larger expression whereas, if is more flexible. The if statement can have multiple statements, multiple assignments and expressions (in form of a compound statement) in its body.
• When ?: operator is used in its nested form, it becomes complex and difficult to understand. This form of ?: is generally used to conceal the purpose of code.

In the next article we will learn about how to use switch statement in JAVA with an example.