What the heck the real definition of Ternary Operator!?

[Yukha]

I just learned about unary,binary, ans ternary operator..

 

From what i learned, ternary is operation that needs 3 operand.. 

 

So, why conditional if else ?: is ternary!!  

How about a = b+c+d; ? Aren't they ternary too? (B+c+d)

 

please help:/ im dying from this shit

 

[mariushm]

ternary  = composed of three items.

 

Operation which involves three variables or in your case  variable =  (condition is true) then one thing else another thing.   a = (1>0) ? true : false;

 

a = b + c+ d  is not, as b + c + d can be simplified to a single variable. It's two additions .. add c to b, then add d to b , then put b in a  ... they're simple operations.

 

[Blade of Grass]

On 2017-10-20 at 10:11 PM, mariushm said:

ternary  = composed of three items.

 

Operation which involves three variables or in your case  variable =  (condition is true) then one thing else another thing.   a = (1>0) ? true : false;

 

a = b + c+ d  is not, as b + c + d can be simplified to a single variable. It's two additions .. add c to b, then add d to b , then put b in a  ... they're simple operations.

 

Just to expand this a bit, what we're talking about is called the arity of the function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arity

It should be noted that all infix notation can be rewritten in prefix (or, Polish) notation, examine this C++ pseudo code as an example

int ternary(bool cond, int tRes, int fRes) {
	if (cond) return tRes;
	return fRes;
}

Now, with this given code we can write these two equivalent statements

a = (a > 0) ? a : b;

a = ternary(a > 0, a, b);

And as you can see the named function has 3 parameters, and has an arity of 3 (AKA, is a ternary function). 

[Unimportant]

On 10/21/2017 at 4:11 AM, mariushm said:

a = b + c+ d  is not, as b + c + d can be simplified to a single variable. It's two additions .. add c to b, then add d to b , then put b in a  ... they're simple operations.

Actually, c and b are added together but the result is stored in a temporary rvalue which is then added to d. b is never modified as your answer implies.

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 10/20/2017 at 7:03 PM, Yukha said:

I just learned about unary,binary, ans ternary operator..

 

From what i learned, ternary is operation that needs 3 operand.. 

 

So, why conditional if else ?: is ternary!!  

How about a = b+c+d; ? Aren't they ternary too? (B+c+d)

 

please help:/ im dying from this shit

 

While you're correct that b + c + d is ternary in the sense there are three operands, in computer science, a ternary operator requires three distinct arguments. b + c + d by itself can be condensed into a single distinct argument. If for example this was b = 1, c = 2, and d = 3, then b + c + d is the same as 1 + 2 + 3 which is the same as 6. There's no difference if you did a = 6 or a = 1 + 2 + 3.

 

a = b ? c : d is shorthand for

if (b)
  	a = c
else
  	a = d

And hence you need three distinct arguments.