What do fellow .NET developers think about the conditional operator?

Question

I really really like the conditional operator in C#. It makes my life very much easier in writing logic such as this:

public  string FormattedFileName
    {
        get
        {
            return string.Format("{0}_{1}_{2}_{3}.xls", 
            DateTime.Now.Month.ToString().Length == 1 
             ? "0" + DateTime.Now.Month.ToString()
             : DateTime.Now.Month.ToString(), 
            DateTime.Now.Day.ToString().Length == 1 
             ? "0" + DateTime.Now.Day.ToString()
             : DateTime.Now.Day.ToString(), 
            DateTime.Now.Year.ToString(), 
            "DownLoaded_From_Clients");
        }
    }

Of course, that means I lose the readability of the code. Anyway, I am just curious what opinion other fellow developers have on this approach of writing code. Thanks. I appreciate both negative and positive comments equally.

Answer 1

Comment your code if you're worried about readability, otherwise I see no reason not to use it.

Answer 2

If you wanted to make it more readble you could always factor out the calls into getCurrentMonth(), getCurrentYear, getCurrentDay calls....

Answer 3

I love the tertiary operator. It is only a problem when you are not familiar with the notation. It is difficult at times to find documentation on the lonely operator, but if it were used more in documentation and books I believe that it would gain much more popularity.

Answer 4

Readability may be achieved through use of indentation, whitespace, and, as Dave said, comments.

Answer 5

It's called ternary operator (we don't call binary code the secondary code, after all), and it has been asked before:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/522919/is-this-a-reasonable-use-of-the-ternary-operator

Answer 6

I only use it for simple if statements, two at most. Any more than that and I'd rather write it out the long way than to have it look like what you posted. Then again I try not to have more than two levels of nested if statements in the first place, so its never really come up.

Answer 7

A few parenthesis help readability immensly.

Consider adding them to help clarify exactly what your alternation operator is doing, and you should be fine. :)

Answer 8

Like it ? Use it : Don't

// if (Like it) then (Use it) else (Don't)

Answer 9

I'm all for using the conditional operator but you don't need it here...

return string.Format("{0}_{1}_{2}_{3}.xls", 
    DateTime.Now.Month.ToString("00"), 
    DateTime.Now.Day.ToString("00"), 
    DateTime.Now.Year, 
    "DownLoaded_From_Clients");

Answer 10

When you need it, the ternary operator is invaluable. However, I think that there are often better ways to express yourself. In the example you gave, why not use a format string that will do exactly what you want: "{0:00}_{1:00}_{2}_{3}.xls", allowing you to simplify your code significantly?

Answer 11

When taking a look in the 'functional' world, where you can't 'do' things conditionally, the conditional operator is very common. In one way or another, I have the impression that the functional paradigm is gaining interest, because it takes out the temporal control flow caused by "if (this) dothis else dothat" statements. It makes it easier to really define what you mean instead of telling the computer what to do.

Readability is one issue, though, in languages that don't fully support this.

Debuggeability is another: in e.g. C++, you can't put a breakpoint on just one of the branches.

Answer 12

My personal rule of thumb is that if it's blatantly obvious what the ternary does, then it's ok. If it's crammed into one line just so the coder could use a ternary, then it should be a bracketed if statement.

Answer 13

Why not do something more like this?

public  string FormattedFileName
{
    get
    {
        return string.Format(
            "{0}_{1}_{2}_{3}.xls", 
            DateTime.Now.Month.ToString().Length == 1 ?
                "0" + DateTime.Now.Month.ToString() :
                DateTime.Now.Month.ToString(), 
            DateTime.Now.Day.ToString().Length == 1 ?
                "0" + DateTime.Now.Day.ToString() :
                DateTime.Now.Day.ToString(), 
            DateTime.Now.Year.ToString(), 
            "DownLoaded_From_Clients");
    }
}

Note I didn't change the code at all, just the formatting. As noted, you don't need to use the conditional operator here, but a little care with your indentation can improve readability immensely. I love the conditional operator, but if you run all your code together in a dense block with no indentation, it's going to be unreadable no matter what operators you are using.

Answer 14

Comic book guy says. "Worst use of ternary operator ever."

Answer 15

I really don't like how you've used it. I use it when I can easily fit it on one line rather than using a multiline if-statement.

Answer 16

I don´t like the ternary operator at all - it is not very readable and I get really grumpy when I do bugfixes and find stuff like that.

Answer 17

The example you have is an abuse of the conditional operator,

It can be expressed much more clearly in this way:

public string FormattedFileName
{
    get {
       return DateTime.Now.ToString("MM_dd_yyyy") +
          "_DownLoaded_From_Clients.xls";
    }
}

I find the conditional operator quite useful and use it often. When used correctly it can help simplify code by making it more concise.

In general, I will avoid chaining multiple conditionals in the same statement, it quickly gets very confusing, resulting in code that can not be maintained.

I also find the ?? very useful and quite often find ternaries that can easily be replaced with ??.

For example:

a == null? "empty" : a

can be replaced with:

a ?? "empty"