Swift Ternary Conditional Operator

Swift Ternary Conditional Operator: In this tutorial, you will learn to use the conditional or ternary operator to adjust the control flow of the program.

A ternary operator can be used to replace the if…else statement in specific situations.

Before you learn about the ternary operator, make sure to know about Swift if…else statement.

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Ternary Operator in Swift

The ternary conditional operator is used to shorten the code of the if statement. It is a special type of operator with three sections for example question? answer1: answer2

It checks whether the question is true or false. In the event that the question is true, it will return the value of answer1; else, it will return the value of answer2.

A ternary operator evaluates a condition and executes a block of code dependent on the condition. Its syntax is

condition ? expression1 : expression2

Here, the ternary operator evaluates condition and

• if the condition is true, expression1 is executed.
• if the condition is false, expression2 is executed.

The ternary operator takes 3 operands (condition, expression1, and expression2). Consequently, the name ternary operator.

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Example: Swift Ternary Operator

// program to check pass or fail
let marks = 60

// use of ternary operator
let result = (marks >= 40) ? "pass" : "fail"

print("You " + result + " the exam")

Output

You pass the exam.

In the above example, we have used a ternary operator to check pass or fail.

let result = (marks >= 40) ? “pass” : “fail”

Here, if marks are greater or equivalent to 40, the pass is assigned to the result. Something else, fail is assigned to result.

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Ternary operator rather than if…else

The ternary operator can be used to replace specific types of if…else statements. For instance,

You can replace this code

// check the number is positive or negative
let num = 15
var result = ""

if (num > 0) {
     result = "Positive Number"
}
else {
     result = "Negative Number"
}

print(result)

with

// ternary operator to check the number is positive or negative
let num = 15

let result = (num > 0) ? "Positive Number" : "Negative Number"
print(result)

Output

Positive Number

Here, the two programs give a similar output. Be that as it may, the use of the ternary operator makes our code more readable and clean.

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Nested Ternary Operators

We can use one ternary operator inside another ternary operator. This is known as a nested ternary operator in Swift. For instance,

// program to check if a number is positive, zero, or negative
let num = 7

let result = (num == 0) ? "Zero" : ((num > 0) ? "Positive" : "Negative")

print("The number is \(result).")

Output

The number is Positive.

In the above example, we the nested ternary operator ((num > 0) ? “Positive” : “Negative” is executed if the condition num == 0 is false.

Note: It is recommended not to use nested ternary operators as they make our code more complex.

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Swift Operators