Ternaries have readability problems: that's enough to shoot them down right there. The small amount of brevity you gain with them just isn't worth it.

Further, I'd claim that "if/else" constructs are eaisier to maintain, because if you need to check for another case later it's easy to stick in "elsif" clauses, but with ternaries you end up with "cascading ternaries", which strike me as even harder to read.

Notably though, Conway in his "Best Practices" doesn't recommend against ternaries, instead he just recommends formatting cascading ternaries in columns to improve readability.


In reply to Re: Mr. Ternary is greater than Mrs. If Else by doom
in thread Mr. Ternary is greater than Mrs. If Else by PerlPhi

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