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Mastering Modern Perl: Writing Efficient and Maintainable Code

The Ternary Conditional Operator

Explore how the ternary conditional operator in Perl evaluates conditions and selects between two expressions. Understand its syntax, short-circuiting behavior, and how it improves code efficiency and clarity in control flow scenarios.

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Evaluation of conditional expression

The ternary conditional operator evaluates a conditional expression and evaluates to one of two alternatives:

Perl
my $time_suffix_1 = afternoon(localtime)
               ? 'afternoon'
               : 'morning';
# equivalent to
my $time_suffix_2;
if (afternoon(localtime)) {
   $time_suffix_2 = 'afternoon';
}
else {
   $time_suffix_2 = 'morning';
}
# testing code
# both expressions are equivalent
say "It is $time_suffix_1 time" if $time_suffix_1 eq $time_suffix_2;
# checks if it's afternoon
sub afternoon {
   my $hour = $_[2];
   return 1 if $hour > 12 && $hour < 17;
}

Syntax

The conditional expression precedes the question mark character (?). The colon character (:) separates the alternatives. The ...