in reply to What does the ternary statement actually do?

Suitably described above. There is one handy case not mentioned as I begin to type this 

$bobscats=2;
$billscats=1;
printf "Bob has %s\n", catstat($bobscats);
printf "Bill has %s\n", catstat($billscats);

sub catstat
{
  my($count)=@_;
  sprintf "%d %s", $count, $count>1?'cats':'cat';
}

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will print out Bob has 2 cats
Bill has 1 cat
So that it doesn't appear that you aren't sure how to say things like xxx has 1 cat(s)

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Re^2: What does the ternary statement actually do?
by tadman (Prior) on Aug 13, 2001 at 07:18 UTC
    In C mode, that's what I usually do, only slightly different: 
    printf ("%d %s%s\n", $count, "cat", ($count==1)?"":"s");
printf ("%d %s%s\n", $count, "cact", ($count==1)?"us":"i");
printf ("%d %s%s\n", $count, "Elvi", ($count==1)?"s":"i");

    [download]
    As an alternative, you might want to use: 
    print $count, "cat", (($count==1)?"":"s"), "\n";
print $count, "cact", (($count==1)?"us":"i"), "\n";
print $count, "Elvi", (($count==1)?"s":"i"), "\n";

    [download]
    Or perhaps as a method: 
    sub quantize
{
     my ($quantity, $singular, $plural) = @_;
     return (1==$quantity)? $singular : $plural;
}

$count = 2;

print "$count @{[quantize($count,'cat','cats')]}\n";

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