Conditional or Ternary Operator (?:) in C

The conditional operator in C is kind of similar to the if-else statement as it follows the same algorithm as of if-else statement but the conditional operator takes less space and helps to write the if-else statements in the shortest way possible. It is also known as the ternary operator in C as it operates on three operands.

Syntax of Conditional/Ternary Operator in C

The conditional operator can be in the form

variable = Expression1 ? Expression2 : Expression3;

Or the syntax can also be in this form

variable = (condition) ?Expression2 : Expression3;

Or syntax can also be in this form

(condition) ? (variable = Expression2) : (variable = Expression3);

It can be visualized into an if-else statement as: 

if(Expression1)
{
 variable = Expression2;
}
else
{
 variable = Expression3;
}

Since the Conditional Operator '?:' takes three operands to work, hence they are also called ternary operators.

Note: The ternary operator have third most lowest precedence, so we need to use the expressions such that we can avoid errors due to improper operator precedence management.

Working of Conditional/Ternary Operator in C

The working of the conditional operator in C is as follows:

• Step 1: Expression1 is the condition to be evaluated.
• Step 2A: If the condition(Expression1) is True then Expression2 will be executed.
• Step 2B: If the condition(Expression1) is false then Expression3 will be executed.
• Step 3: Results will be returned.

Flowchart of Conditional/Ternary Operator in C

To understand the working better, we can analyze the flowchart of the conditional operator given below.

Examples of C Ternary Operator

Example 1: C Program to Store the greatest of the two Numbers using the ternary operator

m is greater than n that is 5 > 4

Example 2: C Program to check whether a year is a leap year using ternary operator

The year 1900 is not a leap year

Conclusion

The conditional operator or ternary operator in C is generally used when we need a short conditional code such as assigning value to a variable based on the condition. It can be used in bigger conditions but it will make the program very complex and unreadable.