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

title
Ternary Operator

Ternary Operator

The ternary operator in C is a shorthand for simple if/else statements.

It takes three arguments:

1. An condition
2. The result if the condition evaluates to true
3. The result if the condition evaluates to false

Syntax

condition ? value_if_true : value_if_false

value_if_true and value_if_false must have the same type, and must be simple expressions not full statements.

Example

Here's an example without the ternary operator:

int a = 10, b = 20, c;

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

printf("%d", c);

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

int a = 10, b = 20, c;

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

printf("%d", c);

Both examples will output:

10

c is set equal to a (10), because the condition a < b was true.

Nested Example

The ternary operator can also be nested.

Consider this nested if-else statement :

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 operators:

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 code snippets will be:

3