Perl Ternary Operator tutorial for beginner examples

Perl Ternary (Conditional) Operator

ternary operators also conditional operator, that accepts three operands, Conditional expression followed by ?, code statement to execute, if true, followed by a colon :, followed by code statements

Syntax

  condition? if_true_perl_statements_to_execute : if_false_perl_statements_to_execute

condition: Valid Perl Conditional expression evaluates to boolean, that returns a boolean value(true or false)
if_true_perl_statements_to_execute: Perl statements to execute if condition evaluated to true
if_false_perl_statements_to_execute : Perl statements to execute if condition evaluated to false

It is the same as short-hand syntax if else conditional statements.

if (condition) {
    if_true_perl_statements_to_execute;
} else {
    if_false_perl_statements_to_execute;
}

It is useful for developers to reduce code lines and simplify

Perl Ternary Operator Examples

A boolean variable is created initialized and used in the ternary operator.

It prints VALID if it is true(1), else NOT VALID

my $isValid = 1;

$isValid ? print "VALID\n" : print "NOT VALID\n";

Another example to use a comparison operator in a conditional expression. Below, $Agevariable is declared and assigned with a value. These variables are compared with 60 and return the string.

The result is assigned to a variable

Here is an example of a Perl Ternary Operator assignment

my $age = 10;

$result = $age >=60 ? "Senior Citizen" : "Not Senior Citizen";
print "$result\n";

One more example to check in Perl Subroutines

This example contains sub-routines that return the ternary operator result

sub check_age {
    my $age = 50;
    return $age >=60 ? " Senior Citizen" : "Not Senior Citizen";
}

The same can be rewritten using if the else conditional expression

sub check_age {
    my $age = 40;
    my $result;
    if ($age >= 60) {
        $result = "Senior Citizen";
    }
    else {
        $result = "Not Senior Citizen";
    }
    return $result;
}

Another example is, the Perl Conditional operator with multiple conditions

You can use multiple conditions or nested conditions using statements inside ()

my $age=40
print ($age < 10) ? "Child" : ($age < 18) ? "Teenage" : ( $age <60> 18) ? "Man" : "Senior";

Perl- Ternary

Perl Ternary (Conditional) Operator

Perl Ternary Operator Examples