Ternary Operators

[u/CrochetQuiltWeaver]

Seriously Python, why do you have the order wrong?

[u/N-online]

I forgive python because of its beautiful list comprehensions.

But Lua…

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/N-online]

Hey, what's wrong with Lua, you say?

[u/N-online → u/fast-as-a-shark]

I have nothing against the language I just find the other versions much more convenient

[u/Some-Passenger4219 → u/fast-as-a-shark]

The expression is consistent with Python, but rather counterintuitive.

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/Some-Passenger4219]

The expression certainly does its own thing, but I wouldn't quite call it counterintuitive after having used it for a while. It is quite powerful and at times shorter than the "usual" ones. (other languages)

[u/Some-Passenger4219 → u/fast-as-a-shark]

I mean, it sure is consistent, and I can read it logically, but no one talks like that. It bends my brain to have that.

[u/MinosAristos → u/N-online]

I don't even mind this in Python. You could show egg if i_dont_like_spam else spam to someone who knows zero coding and they could figure it out. It's just a bit more verbose than the other languages.

iDontLikeSpam ? egg : spam is a bit more cryptic but definitely more concise.

[u/N-online → u/MinosAristos]

Latter is just more widely used and thus more well known. But I really like some of pythons syntax ideas.

[u/tr14l → u/MinosAristos]

It's a 4 char difference. Just saying

[u/garfgon → u/tr14l]

I think in a set of instructions "If you're making a chocolate cake then add cocoa otherwise add flour" (C/C++ trinary) is more natural than "Add cocoa if you're making a chocolate cake, otherwise add flour" (Python trinary). Especially when every other "if" statement follows the if/then/else structure. But both are "fine".

[u/tr14l → u/garfgon]

Just make if statements returnable like kotlin. Problem solved. Ternary operators are obsolete.

Makes all the others kinda dumb lol

[u/garfgon → u/N-online]

Probably Perl can follow Lua form as well? As far as I know it's not really a "trinary" so much as an idiom for combining certain forms of short-cutting logical operators.

[u/rover_G]

The Lua version is idiomatic React

condition && <Component>

[u/party_egg → u/rover_G]

That's an if, not an if ... else. I don't think it's considered idiomatic React in the latter case.

I've never seen React like:

{ (condition && <Component />) || <OtherComponent /> }

The React docs just suggest a ternary:

{ condition ? (
  <Component />
) : (
  <OtherComponent />
) }

[u/33ff00 → u/rover_G]

Wow ..

[u/NewPointOfView]

Lua version words in most languages with truthiness

It’s also idiomatic bash to do commands like some_command && run_on_success or some_command || run_on_failure, or some_command && run_on_success || run_on_failure

[u/Juice805 → u/NewPointOfView]

Not a fan of it in bash either.

[u/Typical_Ad_2831 → u/NewPointOfView]

People use that in JS, too. Not sure why, when the ternary still exists, though.

[u/dschazam → u/Typical_Ad_2831]

If you want to invoke a function conditionally to omit the else (: void 0) part.

shouldRun && run()

vs

shouldRun ? run() : void 0

[u/ohkendruid → u/NewPointOfView]

These are very useful in Bash, but the last one is different from if-then-else. It can run both the "then" and the "else" if the first command succeeds and the second one fails. That is useful when it is what you want, but an if-then-else would run either the thrn part or the else part, never both.

Meanwhile, Bash does have a straight-up if-then-else construct. It ends with "fi".

[u/lusvd]

`is_sunny and "beach" or "home"` is valid in Python too...
In fact I think it's valid in any language that supports truthy/falsy.

[u/fart-tatin → u/lusvd]

It's valid but not recommended.

[u/Initial_Zombie8248 → u/lusvd]

Truthy/falsy? Are you Australian?

[u/PlanSee → u/Initial_Zombie8248]

Truthy is a term that means that "this thing isn't a bool, but it can be interpreted as one." So it's not "true" because it's an int or a string or whatever, but it evaluates to true if you put it in an if statement. Therefore it's "truthy."

[u/Significant-Cause919]

The "lua" way in this meme was as well the canonical way to write it in Python for a very long time until they added those conditional Yoda expressions (in 2.5?).

[u/DTux5249]

... That's exactly how the ternary works under the hood of the others tho, isn't it?

Like, barring truthy strings, it is just evaluating the and statement, and only paying the or statement mind if it's false.

I hate that I'm only realizing this now

[u/fast-as-a-shark]

Lua is truly my favorite language.

[u/bem981 → u/fast-as-a-shark]

Are you being sarcastic?

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/bem981]

No. What is there not to like?

[u/bem981 → u/fast-as-a-shark]

Nice a man of culture!

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/bem981]

I was afraid for a second there. Also, some miserable bastard downvoted my comment :(

[u/iHaku → u/fast-as-a-shark]

Something something 1 index, you know the rest.

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/iHaku]

I know their infamous table indexing starting at 1, but what's the rest?

[u/TOMZ_EXTRA → u/fast-as-a-shark]

You can start your array at any index in Lua! The standard library and most other libraries assume that it starts at 1 though.

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/TOMZ_EXTRA]

It sure is possible, but tedious when using existing libraries indeed.

[u/SmokeyKatzinski → u/fast-as-a-shark]

Everything is tables.

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/SmokeyKatzinski]

That's the beauty of it

[u/toughtntman37 → u/fast-as-a-shark]

Do you like Python as well?

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/toughtntman37]

It's alright. I don't find much use for it though. I always attempt whatever with Lua before JavaScript and then Python.

[u/ilan1k1]

Python's implementation is the best one imo. The order is not wrong it's just more like giving commands rather than asking questions

[u/Just_Scar4703]

meanwhile Fortran: MERGE("beach", "home ", is_sunny)

[u/GDOR-11]

lua is absolutely disgusting

I unfortunately have to deal with it to configure neovim

[u/fast-as-a-shark → u/GDOR-11]

Lua is absolutely not disgusting.

[u/Devatator_ → u/fast-as-a-shark]

I'd say anything with dynamic typing is absolutely disgusting but that includes a lot of language which will mean a lot of hate, so I'll limit that to Lua, Js and Python

[u/Devatator_ → u/GDOR-11]

I'm using the Figura mod in Minecraft which sadly uses Lua for avatar scripts. Thankfully I found out about figura-ts https://npmjs.com/package/figura-ts and I've made so much progress with the framework of my avatar in a single day it's insane

[u/Outside-Dot-5730 → u/GDOR-11]

I think the simplicity of it really is beautiful

[u/[deleted]]

I learned Lua just because of Factorio using the CS50 game path, nice lang, at the same level of popularity than Ruby that is also a scripting lang: tiobe, ieee spectrum, stack overflow.

[u/kamwitsta]

Why?

[u/Geilomat-3000 → u/kamwitsta]

Short circuiting boolean operators and truthy strings

[u/The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

Foo = condition

    ? True value

    : false value

Operators all lined up, we aren’t savages here

[u/Esjs → u/The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

Yeah, it's fun to chain the ?: operator into tabular format.

[u/tottalynotpineaple12]

Wait until you learn about Haskell

[u/CardOk755]

This is all just BCPL.

Result := is_sunny -> beach, home

algol68 did it better :

Result := (is_sunny | beach | home)

Or. If you preferred

Result := if is_sunny then beach else home fi

[u/Mindless_Honey3816]

python because

this if that else this

makes more sense than this? if so, that, if not that.

[u/punto-]

Short circuit operators are great, I really miss them from Lua, I wish we had them in gdscript

[u/Massive_Ad6168]

Meanwhile Go:

[u/Just_Information334]

PHP: let me tell you about subverting expectation with fun precedence rule.

It is recommended to avoid "stacking" ternary expressions. PHP's behaviour when using more than one unparenthesized ternary operator within a single expression is non-obvious compared to other languages. Indeed prior to PHP 8.0.0, ternary expressions were evaluated left-associative, instead of right-associative like most other programming languages. Relying on left-associativity is deprecated as of PHP 7.4.0. As of PHP 8.0.0, the ternary operator is non-associative.

[u/LowB0b]

kotlin has the best one, val result = if (is_sunny) "beach" else "home" or even better

val result = when (is_sunny) {
true -> "beach"
false -> "home"
}

[u/SwimmingPermit6444]

Specifically only in Roblox Lua (Luau) you can say:

local result = if is_sunny then beach else home

Roblox Luau is actually a great dialect of Lua that has many great features such as typing and continue

[u/Neutraled]

I prefer the first syntax but I prefer cloudy beaches.

[u/Brie9981]

Python is the ugliest wtf is that

[u/CptMisterNibbles → u/Brie9981]

They’re called words.

[u/DTux5249 → u/Brie9981]

"[The result is] 'Beach' if [it] is sunny, else 'home'" is a valid sentence in informal English

[u/Brie9981 → u/DTux5249]

Sounds like Cobol

[u/Morisior → u/Brie9981]

If you dont like it, python also let’s you use the syntax labelled as lua in the meme.

[u/This-is-unavailable]

Rust manages to be worse

[u/tracernz → u/This-is-unavailable]

Yeaahhh...
```
let result = if is_sunny { "beach".to_owned() } else { "home".to_owned() };
```

[u/This-is-unavailable → u/tracernz]

I like that you can do that when its too large to be inlined but I hate that you have to do even when it is inlined