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Ternary Operators in Java

The ternary operator is the operator that works on three operands and used to make single line conditional statements. It is also known as the short-hand of if-else statement. We can use it in Java to validate an expression.

Syntax of Ternary Operator

The syntax of the ternary operator in Java.

variable = expression ? statement1 : statement2;

It uses two symbols ? (question mark) and : (colon) to construct a conditional statement. 

The expression is a boolean expression that returns a boolean value either true or false.

Based on the return value either the first statement or the second statement is evaluated.

Let's understand it with a simple example.

Example: How to use Ternary Operator in Java

In this example, we used the ternary operators to find the greater value between two integers. Usually, programmers use if-else statements to perform these conditional operations but with the help of ternary operators, we can do the same. See how the code is compact.

/* 
 *  Code example of ternary operator in Java
 */
public class JExercise {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		int a = 10;
		int b = 12; 
		String str = (b>a)?"a is greater":"b is greater";
		System.out.println(str);
	}
}

Output:

a is greater

 

This example is an if-else version of the above code. You can think of it as.

/* 
 *  Code example of ternary operator in Java
 */
public class JExercise {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		int a = 10;
		int b = 12;
		String str = "";
		if(b>a) {
			str = "a is greater";
		}
		else { str = "b is greater";
		}
		System.out.println(str);
	}
}

Output:

a is greater
 

 

Nested Ternary Operators in Java

Like, nested if-else statements, we can create nested ternary operators as well. See, in this example, we used nested ternary operators to find a greater value. 

/* 
 *  Code example of nested ternary operator in Java
 */
public class JExercise {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		int a = 8;
		String str = (a > 10) ? "Number is greater than 10" : 
			(a > 5) ? "Number is greater than 5" : "Number is less than equal to 5";
			System.out.println(str);
	}
}

Output:

Number is greater than 5