I love ternary for assigning to constants.
proportional reaction
Submitted 6 months ago by guber@lemmy.blahaj.zone to [deleted]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/4162679e-4107-4971-9740-1c5b5cd9adaf.webp
Comments
benni@lemmy.world 6 months ago
groctel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
At my previous workplace we had a C macro that was something like
#define CheckWhatever(x__, true__, false__) \ whatever(x) ? (true__) : (false__)
I don’t remember this shit, so I’m just paraphrasing cursed C. The question one would ask is… why? Well, because you also want to do
#define CheckWhatever2(x__, true__, false__) \ CheckWhatever((x__ ##1), (true__), (false__)) \ CheckWhatever((x__ ##2), (true__), (false__))
And, of course
#define CheckWhatever3(x__, true__, false__) \ CheckWhatever2((x__ ##1), (true__), (false__)) \ CheckWhatever2((x__ ##2), (true__), (false__))
guber@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
yeah… yikes. c is a beautiful language but thing like these are why macros may be it’s largest blemish. hope that codebase doesn’t keep planes flying!
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For it’s faults, I think what makes C beautiful is that it gives you complete freedom do be an absolute idiot.
Whenever I decide to hack something together with an arcane macro, I feel like an animal being released back into the wild, with the compiler yelling “Be free! Explore the mysteries of our incomprehensible world!”
four@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
x = if y > 5 { "foo" } else { "bar" }This is just superior to anything else
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In what language is that valid syntax?
four@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
This is Rust syntax, but there’s similar syntax in Haskell
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is valid rust. I don’t know if there are more languages with this feature
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I honestly can’t see how this is more readable than
x = (y > 5) ? “foo” : “bar”I get that it’s a syntax that needs to be learned, but it’s just so clean and concise!
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because it can be done for multiple lines too. And you can do else-if too. Also, “if” and “else” is more recognizable than “?” and “:”
x = if y > 5 { println!("Y was over 5"); z + 5 } else if y < 0 { handle_negative_y(y); z - y } else { println!("<WARN> unexpected value for y"} 0 }
four@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
What I like about using
ifandelsefor that is that you’re already using those keywords for branching in other parts of the code.Though my least favorite is probably Python’s:
x = "foo" if y > 5 else "bar"It just seems backwards to me
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
(‘bar’,:‘foo’)&({~ 5&< )
groctel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Never forget your roots
(setq x (if (> y 5) :foo :bar))
9point6@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Control structure conditional:
- verbose
- boring
- may result to nothing
Ternary expression:
- terse
- all action
- always leads to a result
BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Don’t you just love the readability
a = a > b ? (b > c ? (a < d ? c : a) : d) : (b < c ? a : d )
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Weird example. 3 nested conditionals is not the typical use case for a ternary, and 2 of the 5 branches result in a pointless a=a assignment. I agree this is bad code, but it’s just as bad and hard to parss in a normal if-else structure too:
if (a>b) { if (b>c) { if (a<d) { a=c; } else { a=a; } } else { a=d; } } else { if (b<c) { a=a; } else { a=d; } }
In another situation, though, it’s perfectly readable to have a much more typical ternary use case like:
a = c > d ? c : dAnd a pair of parentheses never hurt readability either:
a = (c > d) ? c : dBeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Good point, I have only seen 2. nested ternary operators in the wild, and I am pretty sure the second level was added as a bugfix.
subignition@fedia.io 6 months ago
this is way more nested ternary operators than I would ever use (which I understand is for the sake of example) but if you rearrange them so that the simplest statements are in the true branches, and use indentation, you can make it at least a little more readable
a = a <= b ? (b < c ? a : d) : b <= c ? d : (a < d ? c : a);
bluespin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
you would love jsx/tsx with react
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Bah
Ternary is just a compressed if-elseif-else chain with a guaranteed assignment.
If you format it like a sane person, or like you would an if/else chain, then it’s way easier to read than if/else chains.guber@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
if else chain? believe of or not, straight to jail.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Hey, when you gotta pick a value from a bunch of options, it’s either if/elseif/else, ternary, switch/case, or a map/dict.
Ternary generally has the easiest to read format of the options, unless you put it all on one line like a crazy person.
Amir@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
All my homies love ternary
black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
A lot of languages have more intuitive ternary syntax than C
QuantumTickle@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
“Brought to you by the Go gang”
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
For real though I actually find them incredibly useful for creating clean and readable code. I wish Lua 5.1 had a ternary syntax.
lime@feddit.nu 6 months ago
luas operators are all text in order to be readable. more symbols makes code less readable.
if you want a one line operation that gives a default result, use
or:local a = b or cis equivalent toif b then a = b else a = c end.kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
The issue with Lua’s and/or in this context is that they don’t work if false or nil are valid values. In
a and b or c, ifb = false, the result is alwaysc.I also love null-related operators like ?? and ?. for this, since they explicitly check for null, letting you handle any non-null values for optional/default values. The syntax can get a bit cursed, like
maybeNull?.maybeMethod?.(args)in JS, but I still prefer that to writing out multiple field accesses in an if condition… And arguably the code is only less readable if you aren’t acclimated to it.All that said I do really appreciate Lua’s simplicity, as a language that provides tooling to create the features you want instead of building them into the language, though I wish it had some conventional regex instead of its own patterns.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
OK true, technically speaking it is indeed more readable, I guess I really meant that it takes far longer to read. I do admire Lua’s barebones simplicity.
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
I’ve survived 11 years of programming without ternary operators and prefer to keep it that way
p_consti@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ternary, and inline switch (match expressions), as found in functional languages
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Oh god yea, replicating switch functionality with a huge column of elifs is so gross.
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Easily solved by using Rust and have literally anything evaluate your expression and return whatever