- cross-posted to:
- onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- cross-posted to:
- onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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At my previous workplace we had a C macro that was something like
#define CheckWhatever(x__, true__, false__) \ whatever(x) ? (true__) : (false__)I don’t remember this shit, so I’m just paraphrasing cursed C. The question one would ask is… why? Well, because you also want to do
#define CheckWhatever2(x__, true__, false__) \ CheckWhatever((x__ ##1), (true__), (false__)) \ CheckWhatever((x__ ##2), (true__), (false__))And, of course
#define CheckWhatever3(x__, true__, false__) \ CheckWhatever2((x__ ##1), (true__), (false__)) \ CheckWhatever2((x__ ##2), (true__), (false__))Long story short, someone wanted to
CheckWhatever6inside another macro. While debugging code old enough to vote, my editor suggested expanding the macro, which expanded to ~1400 lines for a single ternary operator chain. Fun times!yeah… yikes. c is a beautiful language but thing like these are why macros may be it’s largest blemish. hope that codebase doesn’t keep planes flying!
For all its faults, I think what makes C beautiful is that it gives you complete freedom do be an absolute idiot.
Whenever I decide to hack something together with an arcane macro, I feel like an animal being released back into the wild, with the (pre-)compiler yelling “Be free! Explore the mysteries of our incomprehensible world!”
For real though I actually find them incredibly useful for creating clean and readable code. I wish Lua 5.1 had a ternary syntax.
Ternary, and inline switch (match expressions), as found in functional languages
Oh god yea, replicating switch functionality with a huge column of elifs is so gross.
luas operators are all text in order to be readable. more symbols makes code less readable.
if you want a one line operation that gives a default result, use
or:a = b or cis equivalent toif b then a = b else a = c end.The issue with Lua’s and/or in this context is that they don’t work if false or nil are valid values. In
a and b or c, ifb = false, the result is alwaysc.I also love null-related operators like ?? and ?. for this, since they explicitly check for null, letting you handle any non-null values for optional/default values. The syntax can get a bit cursed, like
maybeNull?.maybeMethod?.(args)in JS, but I still prefer that to writing out multiple field accesses in an if condition… And arguably the code is only less readable if you aren’t acclimated to it.All that said I do really appreciate Lua’s simplicity, as a language that provides tooling to create the features you want instead of building them into the language, though I wish it had some conventional regex instead of its own patterns.
OK true, technically speaking it is indeed more readable, I guess I really meant that it takes far longer to read. I do admire Lua’s barebones simplicity. Thank you for the “or” tip, I’ve used it a few times before but I often forget about it.
always remember that code is read more than it is written. complex lines need to be deciphered, simple lines don’t. especially fun with symbols that have nonlocal effects like rusts
?.
I’ve survived 11 years of programming without ternary operators and prefer to keep it that way
Don’t you just love the readability
a = a > b ? (b > c ? (a < d ? c : a) : d) : (b < c ? a : d )this is way more nested ternary operators than I would ever use (which I understand is for the sake of example) but if you rearrange them so that the simplest statements are in the true branches, and use indentation, you can make it at least a little more readable
a = a <= b ? (b < c ? a : d) : b <= c ? d : (a < d ? c : a);
Control structure conditional:
- verbose
- boring
- may result to nothing
Ternary expression:
- terse
- all action
- always leads to a result
Bah
Ternary is just a compressed if-elseif-else chain with a guaranteed assignment.
If you format it like a sane person, or like you would an if/else chain, then it’s way easier to read than if/else chains.if else chain? believe of or not, straight to jail.
Hey, when you gotta pick a value from a bunch of options, it’s either if/elseif/else, ternary, switch/case, or a map/dict.
Ternary generally has the easiest to read format of the options, unless you put it all on one line like a crazy person.
me personally, i prefer switch case statements for many-value selection, but if ternary works for you, go ham (as long as you don’t happen to be the guy who’s code I keep having to scrub lol)
If there’s more than two branches in the decision tree I’ll default to a if/else or switch/case except if I want to initialise a
constto a conditional value, which is one of the places I praise the lord for ternaries.
x = if y > 5 { "foo" } else { "bar" }This is just superior to anything else
I honestly can’t see how this is more readable than
x = (y > 5) ? "foo" : "bar"I get that it’s a syntax that needs to be learned, but it’s just so clean and concise!
What I like about using
ifandelsefor that is that you’re already using those keywords for branching in other parts of the code.Though my least favorite is probably Python’s:
x = "foo" if y > 5 else "bar"It just seems backwards to me
While Python’s version does feel a bit backwards, it’s at least consistent with how list comprehensions are set up. They can also feel a bit “backwards” imo, especially when they include conditionals.
List comprehension is another thing I don’t like about Python :)
There’s more of those, but one thing I do like about Python is that I get paid for writing it, so I try not to complain too much
Never forget your roots
(setq x (if (> y 5) :foo :bar))(‘bar’,:‘foo’)&({~ 5&< )
All my homies love ternary
lua -e "print('Lua: ' .. ('awkward_look_monkey_meme' and '👀' or '😐'))" python -c "print('Python: ' + (not 'awkward_look_monkey_meme' and '👀' or '😐'))"you would love jsx/tsx with react
“Brought to you by the Go gang”
A lot of languages have more intuitive ternary syntax than C
