Can Java's ternary/conditional operator (?:) be used to call methods instead of assigning values?

Question

In pages like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?: the ternary/conditional operator ?: seems to be used for conditional assignments. I tried to use it for method cal

Answer 1

The ternary operator is simply syntactic sugar.
It makes code easier to read/write, but it does not add real functionality.
Its primary use was to compress several lines of code into a single line, and was very useful when building Strings that differ only slightly, based on some conditions.

eg.

Collection col = ...
System.out.println("There " + (col.size()==1 ? "is" : "are") + " "
     + col.size() + " " + (col.size()==1 ? "element" : "elements")
     + " in the collection");

instead of

Collection col = ...
String message = "There ";
if(col.size()==1)
    message += "is";
else
    message += "are";
message += " "+col.size()
if(col.size()==1)
    message += " element";
else
    message += " elements";
message += " in the collection";
System.out.println(message);

As you can see, it simplifies the code.
(note: In the second example it is better to use StringBuilder instead of String concatenation)

But since (condition) ? doThis() : doThat(); (without return values) has the same meaning as if(condition) doThis(); else doThat(); there would be two ways of writing the same thing, without adding functionality. It would only complicate things:

• for programmers: code is not uniform
• for the implementation of the ternary operator: it now has to also support void methods

---

So No, the ternary operation can not be used for conditional method calling. Use if-else instead:

if(condition)
    doThis();
else
    doThat();