Trinary Expressions

[jennides]

I just finished reading Marion Weerning's article on optimizing your pages (http://www.phpbuilder.com/) and I'm trying to get my head wrapped around trinary expressions.

I understand that this:

if ($x == '7') {
echo 'yes';
}
else [
echo 'no';
}

can be written as a trinary as follows:

echo ($x == 7) ? 'yes' : 'no';

which, I must agree with Marion, is a much cleaner way of writing it.

But what I'm wondering is can the following be written as a trinary expression. I've tried all kinds of combinations of what I thought might have worked, but I've come up empty handed.

if (isset($POST['blurb'])) { $blurb = $POST['blurb']; } else { $blurb = $page_info['blurb']; }

Should I just stick with what I've got, or is there a more efficient way to write this code?

Thanks!

JeNNiDeS
Budding PHP Sharp shooter

[tomhath]

The secret is in these two words "trinary expressions".

An expression is something that has a value. Marion's example echos the value of the trinary expression. So what you want is to assign $blurb the value of the trinary expression:

$blurb = (isset($POST['blurb'])) ? $POST['blurb'] : $page_info['blurb'];

[su1d]

you may even go further:

$blurb = isset($POST['blurb']) ? $POST['blurb'] : (isset($page_info['blurb']) ? $page_info['blurb'] : false);

[tomhath]

I didn't test what I posted, it might not work depending on how php evaluates the expression.

It might will fail when $_POST['blurb'] is not set because the trinary expression is trying to use an unset variable; the "if" statement guarantees the unset variable is not referenced.

[jennides]

You're right Tom... if $_POST['blurb'] is not set it fails to return $page_info['blurb']

Oh well... a learning experience none-the-less

Thanks

PS: I tried su1d's suggestion too, but the same thing happened. When $_POST['blurb'] is set all if fine, if it isn't, it fails.