On: Choosing PHP in 2022 and beyond

[cozzyd]

I'm sad to hear they finally fixed this ridiculous behavior: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/ternary_associativity

[dabernathy89 → cozzyd]

On the other hand, nested ternaries are pretty awful even when they work as expected.

[cozzyd → dabernathy89]

They're quite readable IMO, in the right context (in languages other than PHP)

   double piecewise(double x) 
   { 
     return x < 0 ? x*x : 
            x < 1 ? x   : 
            x < 5 ? x*x-x+1 : 
                    21.
   }

[wizofaus → cozzyd]

That'd be fine if your debugger let you set a breakpoint on the 'x*x-x+1' bit.

[TylerE → dabernathy89]

Ternaries are just a mistake, period.

[dabernathy89 → TylerE]

I use them all the time, as long as they can be written legibly.

  $result = $someCondition
    ? $foo->abc()
    : $foo->def();

To me that's much nicer than an if statement.

[wizofaus → dabernathy89]

I'd kinda like to see a language that allowed ternaries but only when the components were sufficiently simple, e.g. no compound ternaries or even no more than a single arithmetic/boolean operator. Though enforcing it with linter rules is probably the better option.

[Dudeman112 → dabernathy89]

The problem with ternaries is people getting so excited about it they build some one line monstrosities that really should be broken down into more lines

And for what's not a monstrosity to begin with... It's not a monstrosity to begin with, you ain't gaining much

[kaba0 → dabernathy89]

I believe parent commenter was thinking of if expressions, which are quite similarly short - and I’m also on the opinion that they are much more readable and less prone to mistakes (like how does nested ternaries operate in your given language)