One line if statements

scrupul0us

Can someone gimme an example real quick... i rarely use then and forget... a link would be good so i can bookmark it

like... is this proper usage:

$email=$_POST['email'] == "" ? "NULL" : $_POST['email'];

Houdini

It is called the ternary operator because it takes three operands - a condition, a result for true, and a result for false. If that sounds like an if statement to you, you are right on the money - the ternary operator is a shorthand (albeit very hard to read) way of doing if statements. Here's an example:

$agestr = ($age < 16) ? 'child' : 'adult';

If $age=12 then $agestr will have a value of child, if the value of $age is 16 or more then $age will have the value of adult. In your example if $POST['email'] is equal to nothing then the true condition would set it to NULL if it is set then $email will equal the value that is entered into $POST['email']. Does that help?

scrupul0us

yes sir!.. graci

halojoy

a question
because i am not sure

$email=$POST['email'] == "" ? "NULL" : $POST['email'];

is it alright to use quotations around NULL ????

I imagine this would work just as good:
$email=$POST['email'] == "" ? NULL : $POST['email'];

🙂

bpat1434

Your codes are not the same.

If you are asking if something is null, and you set it to "NULL" then it becomes a string (NULL) and has a value. If you don't use quotes, and set it to NULL then it doesn't have a value.

So if you say:

$email = $_POST['email'] == "" ? null : $_POST['email'];
$email2 = $_POST['email'] == ""? "null" : $_POST['email'];

if($email == $email2)
    echo "They're the same!!";
else
    echo 'Not the same... Look!!<br /><b>email</b>==>[' . $email . ']<br><b>email2</b>==>[' . $email2 . ']';

What would happen?

Test teh code... you get this:

Not the same... Look!!
email==>[]
email2==>[null]

halojoy

bpat1434 wrote:
Your codes are not the same.

If you are asking if something is null,
and you set it to "NULL" then it becomes a string (NULL) and has a value.

If you don't use quotes, and set it to NULL then it doesn't have a value.

Thanks, that was what I meant.
$var = "NULL";
does not mean $var is NULL
It does mean that $var is SET to be a STRING = 'NULL'

But if you make a variable a string 'NULL' ,
why use the string 'NULL', when you can use 'nop' , 'nothing' or whatever

Same thing goes for trying to make a variable FALSE and put Quotes around ( "FALSE" or "false"

<?php

$var = "FALSE"; // var is not FALSE, it is a string of 5 characters!

if( $var ) echo 'result 1':
else echo 'result 0';
echo '<br>';

if ( $var == FALSE ) echo 'var is FALSE';
else echo 'var is not FALSE';

bpat1434

It's user preference I guess... but as long as they understand that "false" != false then we're okay.

scrupul0us

one is string one is boolean 🙂