Operators; conditional operator

An operator is a symbol that tells the compiler to perform a specific operation (arithmetic, logical, relational, etc.) on one or more operands. For example, in a + b the symbol + is the operator and a, b are operands.

Conditional operator (? :)

It is the only ternary operator in C (it takes three operands) and works like a short if-else.

Syntax: variable = (condition) ? expression1 : expression2;

If the condition is true, expression1 is evaluated; otherwise expression2 is evaluated.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
    int a = 12, b = 20, max;
    max = (a > b) ? a : b;
    printf("Maximum = %d\n", max);
    printf("%s\n", (a % 2 == 0) ? "a is even" : "a is odd");
    return 0;
}

Output:

Maximum = 20
a is even

Here (a > b) ? a : b gives 20 as the larger value, and the second statement chooses between two messages.