3 ms·
A fairly short answer: code readability. People seem to try to write their code as compact as possible, not realizing that they usually only write a piece of c
by mueslix 8y ago
A fairly short answer: code readability.
People seem to try to write their code as compact as possible, not realizing that they usually only write a piece of code once, but they and others will have to decipher and make sense of it a dozen times in the near future.
- thamizhan2611 8y agoI agree, when the logic is very complicated to be represented in a line of code.
- pcvarmint 8y ago(I use "conditional expression" in place of "ternary operator" here.) I have no idea why GoLang doesn't have conditional expressions. I find a conditional expression to be much easier to parse than if-else statements. If it's too hard to read, then why is LISP written almost totally as expressions, and is still considered viable? a ? b ? c : d : e is much easier for me to read and understand than if (a) { if (b) { r = c; } else { r = d; } } else { r = e; } GoLang is supposed to be designed to remove "boilerplate code" and reduce code size, so I don't know why it doesn't have conditional expressions. Without conditional expressions, C++11 (but not C++14 and later) constexpr functions wouldn't be Turing-complete.
- kazinator 8y agoLisp is unambiguous, whereas: x = a ? b : c; Oops; that assigns x = a, and tests it. Not if that = is that of an initializer, though: int x = a ? : b : c; so now we have an expression that changes meaning if we have to split the initialization off into an assignment. You're often better off if you put it behind a macro: #define IF(X, Y, Z) ((X) ? (Y) : (Z)) In C coding, a lot of ternary action happens behind the curtain of preprocessing, where expression is almost fully parenthesized.
- pcvarmint 8y agoC non-sequitor. Assignment is always lower in precedence than conditional expressions. CPP macros is red herring.