Coding standards: ternary operator

By odegard on 9 Oct 2014 at 06:57 UTC

I'm finding myself using the ternary operator control structure more and more. I usually do oneliners like this:

$result = isset($somvariable) ? $somevariable : 'default';

Recently I saw another format, one I like very very much increasing readability a lot:

$result = isset($somevariable)
  ? $somevariable
  : 'default';

One shouldn't go nuts with ternary operators but they are very useful in some cases.

There is no mention of ternary operators in the coding standards https://www.drupal.org/coding-standards

What do people use?

Comments

_

WorldFallz commented 9 October 2014 at 17:07

I use the first form. While I agree the readability of the second is better, I'm usually using the ternary precisely because of its compact form. If I'm going to split it across lines anyway, then I might as well use if-then-else, lol.

Drupal coding standards are

ayesh commented 10 October 2014 at 08:57

Drupal coding standards are based on Pear standards, which suggests the second. However, just as Worldfallz said, I too use the single-line format if it does not make the code look ugly or exceed the 80 char mark.

What's new and changing in PHP 8.4

I try to use the same

NormySan commented 3 April 2017 at 15:17

I sometime use the first alternative if it's really short but i do prefer the second approach since it makes the core more readable and creates a nice little chunk that can have newlines before and after.

I prefer very readable code over trying to fit to fewer lines of code.

Both are correct !!

nitin.k commented 4 April 2017 at 05:23


$result = isset($somvariable) ? $somevariable : 'default';


$result = isset($somevariable)
  ? $somevariable
  : 'default';


// Both follows proper spacing after operators ( = , ?, : ) that is what Drupal Coding standard says.

// Now second point is about new line - Code can be written using multiple lines but should have proper formatting.

// As per readability first one is superb.

PHP 7 allows for an even more readable variant

gogowitsch commented 25 January 2020 at 22:15

In PHP 7 we can use $result = $somevariable ?? 'default'; instead of the example above.

Really?

firfin commented 6 April 2020 at 12:22

$new = isset($var)? $var: 'default'

is not really the same as

$new = $var?? 'default'

is it? In the first $new would be set to the value of $var is declared and is different than NULL , in the second the check is quite different from isset() ?

== EDIT

Sorry, you are absolutely right, https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration70.new-features.php#migration70.n...

Thanks for the tip!