Benefits of using the conditional ?: (ternary) operator

Question

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the ?: operator as opposed to the standard if-else statement. The obvious ones being:

Conditional ?: Operator

Answer 1

If you need multiple branches on the same condition, use an if:

if (A == 6)
  f(1, 2, 3);
else
  f(4, 5, 6);

If you need multiple branches with different conditions, then if statement count would snowball, you'll want to use the ternary:

f( (A == 6)? 1: 4, (B == 6)? 2: 5, (C == 6)? 3: 6 );

Also, you can use the ternary operator in initialization.

const int i = (A == 6)? 1 : 4;

Doing that with if is very messy:

int i_temp;
if (A == 6)
   i_temp = 1;
else
   i_temp = 4;
const int i = i_temp;

You can't put the initialization inside the if/else, because it changes the scope. But references and const variables can only be bound at initialization.