Ternary operator (?:) in Bash

ternary operator ? : is just short form of if/else

case "$b" in
 5) a=$c ;;
 *) a=$d ;;
esac

Or

 [[ $b = 5 ]] && a="$c" || a="$d"

Code:

a=$([ "$b" == 5 ] && echo "$c" || echo "$d")

If the condition is merely checking if a variable is set, there's even a shorter form:

a=${VAR:-20}

will assign to a the value of VAR if VAR is set, otherwise it will assign it the default value 20 -- this can also be a result of an expression.

As alex notes in the comment, this approach is technically called "Parameter Expansion".

if [ "$b" -eq 5 ]; then a="$c"; else a="$d"; fi

The cond && op1 || op2 expression suggested in other answers has an inherent bug: if op1 has a nonzero exit status, op2 silently becomes the result; the error will also not be caught in -e mode. So, that expression is only safe to use if op1 can never fail (e.g., :, true if a builtin, or variable assignment without any operations that can fail (like division and OS calls)).

Note the "" quotes. The first pair will prevent a syntax error if $b is blank or has whitespace. Others will prevent translation of all whitespace into single spaces.

(( a = b==5 ? c : d )) # string + numeric

[ $b == 5 ] && { a=$c; true; } || a=$d

This will avoid executing the part after || by accident when the code between && and || fails.

Here is another option where you only have to specify the variable you're assigning once, and it doesn't matter whether what your assigning is a string or a number:

VARIABLE=`[ test ] && echo VALUE_A || echo VALUE_B`

Just a thought. :)

The let command supports most of the basic operators one would need:

let a=b==5?c:d;

Naturally, this works only for assigning variables; it cannot execute other commands.

The following seems to work for my use cases:

Examples

$ tern 1 YES NO                                                                             
YES

$ tern 0 YES NO                                                                             
NO

$ tern 52 YES NO                                                                            
YES

$ tern 52 YES NO 52                                                                         
NO

and can be used in a script like so:

RESULT=$(tern 1 YES NO)
echo "The result is $RESULT"

tern

function show_help()
{
  echo ""
  echo "usage: BOOLEAN VALUE_IF_TRUE VALUE_IF_FALSE {FALSE_VALUE}"
  echo ""
  echo "e.g. "
  echo ""
  echo "tern 1 YES NO                            => YES"
  echo "tern 0 YES NO                            => NO"
  echo "tern "" YES NO                           => NO"
  echo "tern "ANY STRING THAT ISNT 1" YES NO     => NO"
  echo "ME=$(tern 0 YES NO)                      => ME contains NO"
  echo ""

  exit
}

if [ "$1" == "help" ]
then
  show_help
fi
if [ -z "$3" ]
then
  show_help
fi

# Set a default value for what is "false" -> 0
FALSE_VALUE=${4:-0}

function main
{
  if [ "$1" == "$FALSE_VALUE" ]; then
    echo $3
    exit;
  fi;

  echo $2
}

main "$1" "$2" "$3"

We can use following three ways in Shell Scripting for ternary operator :

    [ $numVar == numVal ] && resVar="Yop" || resVar="Nop"

Or

    resVar=$([ $numVar == numVal ] && echo "Yop" || echo "Nop")

Or

    (( numVar == numVal ? (resVar=1) : (resVar=0) ))

(ping -c1 localhost&>/dev/null) && { echo "true"; } || {  echo "false"; }

You can use this if you want similar syntax

a=$(( $((b==5)) ? c : d ))

There's also a very similiar syntax for ternary conditionals in bash:

a=$(( b == 5 ? 123 : 321  ))

Unfortunately, it only works with numbers - as far as I know.

Here are some options:

1- Use if then else in one line, it is possible.

if [[ "$2" == "raiz" ]] || [[ "$2" == '.' ]]; then pasta=''; else pasta="$2"; fi

2- Write a function like this:

 # Once upon a time, there was an 'iif' function in MS VB ...

function iif(){
  # Echoes $2 if 1,banana,true,etc and $3 if false,null,0,''
  case $1 in ''|false|FALSE|null|NULL|0) echo $3;;*) echo $2;;esac
}

use inside script like this

result=`iif "$expr" 'yes' 'no'`

# or even interpolating:
result=`iif "$expr" "positive" "negative, because $1 is not true"` 

3- Inspired in the case answer, a more flexible and one line use is:

 case "$expr" in ''|false|FALSE|null|NULL|0) echo "no...$expr";;*) echo "yep $expr";;esac

 # Expression can be something like:     
   expr=`expr "$var1" '>' "$var2"`

This is much like Vladimir's fine answer. If your "ternary" is a case of "if true, string, if false, empty", then you can simply do:

$ c="it was five"
$ b=3
$ a="$([[ $b -eq 5 ]] && echo "$c")"
$ echo $a

$ b=5
$ a="$([[ $b -eq 5 ]] && echo "$c")"
$ echo $a
it was five