Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: cond. op. on ='s LHS
Message-ID: <15238@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 19 Feb 91 01:42:40 GMT
References: <1196@sheol.UUCP> <331@smds.UUCP> <5672:Feb1814:26:0291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <5672:Feb1814:26:0291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>> There really is a need for
>> conditional expressions.
>This can be argued. ?: is almost purely syntactic; ...

Yes, but then so is the provision of a multiplicity of ways of
expressing looping.  I seldom have occasion to assign the same value
to alternative variables, as in the example that started this thread,
but often I need to assign alternative values to a given variable, or
return alternative values from a function.  Often it is both
convenient and clear to use a ?: expression rather than cast the code
into the form of an "if" statement.