I'm not sure, but probably historical reasons like much else in PHP. Though, I'm not a real fan of reading other people's nested ternary ops, because if you're

I'm not sure, but probably historical reasons like much else in PHP. Though, I'm not a real fan of reading other people's nested ternary ops, because if you're going that deep, just write an if/then in whatever language you're using? It will keep you under 80 chars which is a polite way to go.