Why is it not possible to overload the ternary operator?

Question

Why is it not possible to overload the ternary operator \' ?: \'?

I use the ternary operator often to consolidate if statements, and am curious why the language desi

Answer 1

if you could override the ternary operator, you would have to write something like this:

xxx operator ?: ( bool condition, xxx trueVal, xxx falseVal );

To call your override, the compiler would have to calculate the value of both trueVal and falseVal. That's not how the built-in ternary operator works - it only calculates one of those values, which is why you can write things like:

return p == NULL ? 23 : p->value;

without worrying about indirecting through a NULL pointer.