Comment by edoceo

19 hours ago

I love the ternary operator as much as anyone. But dang if it doesn't get hard to read when there is are a few, nested even.

Does that operator compile to faster assembly that if I make the same logic with verbose `if` logic? Is that a language specific outcome?

5 comments

edoceo

    cond1 ? res1 :
    cond2 ? res2 :
    cond3 ? res3 :
    or_else_res

If they are truly nested, then that is confusing. But if you have an if-else chain, then it can be quite readable.

  if cond1 then res1
  else if cond2 then res2
  else if cond3 then res3
  else or_else_res

  if cond1 then res1
  elif cond2 then res2
  elif cond3 then res3
  else or_else_res

what is most lua-like?

shevy-java 18 hours ago
I find that so much harder to read compared to if/else or case/when in ruby.
The ? is basically an attempt to use fewer if/else, at the cost of condensed if-else like structure. I always need to look at both parts after the ? whereas in a single if or elsif I don't. case/when in ruby is even better here e. g. regex check:
def foo(i) case i when /^cat/ handle_cats when /^dog/ handle_dogs
(I ommitted the "end"s here to just focus on the conditional logic.)