Ternary Operator '?'

[lavender-programming]

In a lot languages, the ones I can think of are C++, and C# a '?' question mark can be used to do ternary operators.
C++/C#: result = (a >= 45) ? "true": "false";
QB64?: Print (a >= 45) ? "true": "false"
It could make simple if statements easier, and stuff.
The options could be uses of function too like: clamp(1, a, 10) or something.
Just a more compact, and easier way to do smaller conditional things.

[SteveMcNeill]

Lots of issues in the proposed example, which would make it impossible.

PRINT (A >= 45) ? "true": "false"

With the above, you have to keep in mind that the quotation mark is shorthand for PRINT. Try a simple ? "Hello World" sometime.

Issue 2, is that the colon is a command separator. PRINT: PRINT: PRINT <-- those colons there let us stack all the 3 commands on one line.

Which then means that issue 3 is simply the quote left dangling all by itself at the end there. "false"

I'd think this type of thing might would be best served via an user function:

FUNCTION Ternary$ (equation AS FLOAT, truth AS STRING, falseness AS STRING)
    Ternary$ = falseness
    IF equation THEN Ternary$ = truth
END FUNCTION

Which then could go into your example code as: PRINT"; Ternary( a >= 45, "true", "false")

[lavender-programming]

This make sense, and I forgot about the print short-cut, and colon separator. Adding a Ternary Operator doesn't work like any other QB64 syntax, so it would have to be sort-of hard-coded in the lexer/compiler.

[a740g]

VB and friends have the IIf function. However, both the true-part and the false-part are evaluated in those languages which IMO can cause subtle issues that are hard to catch.

If something like _IIF were ever to be implemented in QB64-PE, I would prefer it to be a C-like short-circuiting operator rather than a function.

Also see #211.