Re: Add a ternary operator to the language?

From: Will DeWitt Jr. (edge_at_boink.net)
Date: 06/23/04 

Date: 23 Jun 2004 06:05:47 -0700

Jim Cooper wrote:

>
> > It takes what would traditionally be four lines of code and reduces
> > it to a single line.
>
> But it doesn't improve the readability (ie understanability) of the
> code.

But it doesn't make it any more difficult to understand either. It
*does* improve readability in the sense that now you can see three more
lines at once that you wouldn't have been able to see before. If you
had a lot of code that did this kind of checking (and it's not uncommon
to have such blocks of code) you could save potentially 30+ lines and
make the actual code overall *more* readable.

> A handful of lines here and there makes little difference these days.
> You can save even more lines by writing more than one statement on a
> line :

Yes, but *that* would be confusing to follow. =)

> Less lines is very definitely not equal to clearer code. At best the
> ternary operator is as clear as the alternative, at worst it is a
> hazard to sanity. As I said, I don;t think you've proved your case,
> just proved that you like the construct :-) Since it's one of those
> that there is nowhere near universal agreement about, I think you
> will need a stringer case to get it included in the language.

Well, considering the IfThen functions are a rather recent addition to
the RTL, I'll assume that Borland saw the need at some level and
decided to introduce that hack to (hopefully temporarily) address the
need. Adding a ternary operator proper would be the correct solution,
and I hope Borland can see fit to add this (assuming it's not a time
consuming addition).

Will 

-- 
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