Thanks for the link juerd, I hadn't seen that discussion. However, I think that my idea is quite different to that proposal which suggested a short-hand for the trinary operator involving 3 operands.

eg. $var ??= $x : $y;

The operators I am seeking only involve 2 operands.

Too hard to remember ...

This: $var = $var op $expr ? $var : $expr;

becomes this: $var ?op:= $expr;

Is that hard to remember?

...and too ugly.

Agreed, they ain't beauiful. I was trying to retain the notions of the ternary and the operators and the assignment, but as they are no longer ternary, maybe the ? or the final = could be dropped:

# Instead of these               these or               these?
$lvalue  ?<:= $rvalue;   $lvalue  <:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?<:  $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue  ?>:= $rvalue;   $lvalue <=:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?>:  $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?<=:= $rvalue;   $lvalue  >:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?<=: $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?>=:= $rvalue;   $lvalue >=:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?>=: $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?lt:= $rvalue;   $lvalue lt:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?lt: $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?gt:= $rvalue;   $lvalue le:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?gt: $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?ge:= $rvalue;   $lvalue gt:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?ge: $rvalue;
+     
$lvalue ?le:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ge:= $rvalue;   $lvalue ?le: $rvalue;
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