"If the gender is male, the answer is
him, but if the gender is female, the answer is
her". A common situation in programming - [is/are], [him/her], [yes/no], [child/children], [ice/water/steam], [public/private] - and C and Perl and PHP provide the "ternary" operator ? and : to provide a shorthand alternative to a code-heavy if/else structure:
$thing = ($stock == 1) ? "item" : "items";
(That's PHP and Perl to set the "thing" variable to item (singular) or items (plural) depending on the value of $stock being equal (or not) to 1.
In Perl, there's always half a dozen ways to do anything, and the same effect can be created using the lazy
and and
or keywords ... the logic goes something like this:
i) "If both a
and b need to be true and we have already discovered that
a is false, we don't need to bother to do test b. And indeed to do test b would be inefficient in such a circumstance.
Since (a) is a false value, we'll just return that
ii) "If either a
or b needs to be true, and we have already discovered that
a is true we don't need to bother to do test b. And indeed to do test b would be inefficient in such a circumstance.
Since (a) is a true value, we'll just return that
iii) If we have to move on to test the second item in any circumstance, we may as well just
return the value of that item as it's going to be a true value if the whole result is true, and a false value if the whole result is false.
Let's see that in action ... here in Perl:
[trainee@easterton a9_2]$ perl
print (16 and 35)
35[trainee@easterton a9_2]$ perl
print (16 or 35)
16[trainee@easterton a9_2]$
So the result is 16 or 35. By extending that to use both
and and
or, you'll find that you have a very convenient (and I'm sure planned when the language was written) shorthand for if - else:
[trainee@easterton a9_2]$ perl
print (1 and 4 or 9)
4[trainee@easterton a9_2]$ perl
print (0 and 4 or 9)
9[trainee@easterton a9_2]$
The same thing applies (or rather - ALMOST the same thing) in Lua - where it is especially useful as the language does NOT support the ternary operator:
[trainee@easterton a9_2]$ lua
Lua 5.1.4 Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> print (1 and 4 or 9)
4
> print (0 and 4 or 9)
4
> print ( false and 4 or 9)
9
>
I say "almost" the same, because in Lua, the number 0 is a true value, as is an empty string. Only the boolean false, and nil, are really false values. And that's ideal in most circumstances, where you want to be able to accept 0 as just another number - indeed, in Perl 6 you'll be able to say that a number is "0 but true" which rather acknowledges the need for a revision of the "0 is false" mantra.
(written 2009-08-12)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
U103 - Lua - Conditionals and loops [1685] Short circuit evaluation (lazy operator) in Lua - (2008-06-22)
[1696] Saying NOT in Perl, PHP, Python, Lua ... - (2008-07-04)
[1738] Clean code, jump free (Example in Lua) - (2008-08-06)
[2454] For loops in Lua - (2009-10-14)
[2455] Lua examples - coroutines, error handling, objects, etc - (2009-10-15)
[3397] Does a for loop evaluate its end condition once, or on every iteration? - (2011-08-18)
[3558] Python or Lua - which should I use / learn? - (2011-12-21)
[3686] The goto statement in Lua - (2012-04-06)
[4272] Lazy operators in Lua - what they mean, and examples - (2014-05-05)
[4322] Learning to Program - the conditional statement (if) - (2014-11-21)
[4323] Learning to program - Loop statements such as while - (2014-11-22)
[4574] repeat until in Lua - a one or more rather than a zero or more loop - (2015-11-05)
P204 - Perl - Conditionals and Loops [353] Wimbledon Neck - (2005-06-20)
[930] -> , >= and => in Perl - (2006-11-18)
[1191] Smart English Output - via PHP and Perl ? : operator - (2007-05-18)
[1468] Lexical v Arithemetic testing, Bash and Perl - (2007-12-11)
[1477] Decisions - small ones, or big ones? - (2007-12-18)
[1607] Learning to program in Perl - (2008-04-11)
[1727] Equality and looks like tests - Perl - (2008-07-29)
[2550] Do not copy and paste code - there are much better ways - (2009-12-26)
[2711] For loop - checked once, or evety time? Ruby v Perl comparison and contrast - (2010-04-07)
[2832] Are you learning Perl? Some more examples for you! - (2010-06-27)
[3004] Increment operators for counting - Perl, PHP, C and others - (2010-10-18)
[3895] Flowchart to program - learning to program with Well House - (2012-10-14)
[4031] Showing what programming errors look like - web site pitfall - (2013-03-06)
Some other Articles
See this page in FrenchTraining, Open Source computer languagesAll change - Wiltshire ParliamentaryPrinted Directories - the start of the updating seasonTernary operators alternatives - Perl and Lua lazy operatorsTen years in Melksham - looking forward to ten more.Businesses effected by road works in MelkshamFinding literals rather than patterns in LuaDot, dot, dot in Lua - variable length parameter listsThe indexed and hashed parts of a Lua table