Re^3: Conditional Operator Confusion

The trinary is much like any other operator, for example ==. Lets try this example,

my $result = $a == $b
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Here, you get the result of the == operator, is $a equal $b. If they match it returns true, if they don't match it returns false.

The trinary works in a similar manner except you are setting the value returned instead of the implied value of other operators.

my $result = $a == $b ? 1 : 0;
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This does the same thing as the first example, except you are explicitly setting the value returned. Does this help?

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Re^4: Conditional Operator Confusion by Melly (Chaplain) on Nov 30, 2006 at 17:03 UTC
Not really... I'm sure I'm being really dumb here, but I still don't understand, in the following example, why $x gets set to "FALSE"... just very, very confused... `1==1?$x='TRUE':$y='FALSE'; print "x=$x\n";` [download] Tom Melly, pm@tomandlu.co.uk	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: Conditional Operator Confusion by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 30, 2006 at 17:12 UTC
The conditional operator has higher precedence than the assignment operator, so `$c?$x='TRUE':$y='FALSE'` is the same as `($c?$x='TRUE':$y)='FALSE'` The addition operator has higher precedence than the conditional operator, so `$c?$x+2:$y+3` is the same as `$c?$x+2:($y+3)` If you want to do assignments, use `if` or add parens. Think of as the conditional operator as an operator that returns something.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^6: Conditional Operator Confusion by Melly (Chaplain) on Nov 30, 2006 at 17:25 UTC
Thanks - I think I've finally got it (with some help from the chatterbox as well). All of which goes to confirm something a coworker once told me.. Me: What's the precedence in <lang> for these operators? CW: Who cares? Use brackets - it's easier to read and you won't get screwed... Tom Melly, pm@tomandlu.co.uk	[reply]