freeCodeCamp/guide/english/c/ternary-operator/index.md

---
title: Ternary Operator
---

## Ternary Operator

Programmers use ternary operators in C for decision making inplace of conditional statements **if** and **else**.
The ternary operator is an operator that takes three arguments. The first argument is a comparison argument, the second is the result upon a true comparison, and the third is the result upon a false comparison. If it helps you can think of the operator as shortened way of writing an if-else statement.

Here's a simple decision-making example using **if** and **else**:

```c
int a = 10, b = 20, c;

if (a < b) {
    c = a;
}
else {
    c = b;
}

printf("%d", c);
```

This example takes more than 10 lines, but that isn't necessary. You can write the above program in just 3 lines of code using the **ternary operator**.

### Syntax

`condition ? value_if_true : value_if_false`

The statement evalutes to statement\_1 if the condition is true, and statement\_2 otherwise.

Here's the above example re-written to use the ternary operator:

```c
int a = 10, b = 20, c;

c = (a < b) ? a : b;

printf("%d", c);
```

Output of the example should be:

```c
10
```

`c` is set equal to `a`, because the condition `a<b` was true.

This looks pretty simple, right? Do note that `value_if_true` and `value_if_false` must have the same type, and they cannot be full statements but simply expressions.

The ternary operator can be nested too same like nested if-else statements. Consider this nested if-else statement :
```c
int a = 1, b = 2, ans;
if (a == 1) {
    if (b == 2) {
        ans = 3;
    } else {
        ans = 5;
    }
} else {
    ans = 0;
}
printf ("%d\n", ans);
```

Here's the above code re-written using nested ternary operator:

```c
int a = 1, b = 2, ans;
ans = (a == 1 ? (b == 2 ? 3 : 5) : 0);
printf ("%d\n", ans);
```

The output of both of the above codes should be:

```c
3
```