> I'm not sure I'd say that it can't be done. In some languages it could be implemented if the language itself supports optionals. So "bool ? x" could result in

> I'm not sure I'd say that it can't be done. In some languages it could be implemented if the language itself supports optionals. So "bool ? x" could result in an Optional<type(x)>, while "Optional<type(x)> : y" could be the typical implementation of value_or that is found on optionals. It is tricky because, in flag ? x : y; exactly one of x and y gets evaluated. So, flag ? x would have to evaluate flag first, and only evaluate x if that has a truthy value. That can be tricky in many languages, for example if the programmer writes (b ≠ 0) ? a ÷ b : 0; You’d need lazy evaluation of arguments or something similar.