I saw that used a lot over 15 years ago in BASIC code. BASIC didn't have a ternary conditional operator, but it was possible to emulate it.

$a = $i > $j ? 6 : 10;
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could be written as the following in BASIC (knowing that false is 0 and true is -1):

LET a = (i > j) * 4 + 10;
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just as it could be written as the following in Perl (knowing that false is 0 and true is 1):

$a = ($i > $j) * -4 + 10;
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