A question about the tertiary (? : ) operator

Article View: comp.std.c

Article #482

#482

From: Steve Hosgood
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1989 14:54

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I never noticed until last night that the conditional operator:

<condition>? <val1>: <val2>

..is not a valid lvalue, even if both <val1> and <val2> are lvalues!
I wanted to say:

(flag > 0? foo: bar) = <complex expression>;

..which didn't work, needless to say. I had to employ a temporary variable
and an 'if' statement in the end :-(.

Is there a good reason for this behaviour?
Thanks in advance
Steve

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Steve Hosgood BSc,                             | Phone (+44) 792 295213
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!cybaswan!iiitsh
From: iiitsh@cybaswan.UUCP (Steve Hosgood)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: A question about the tertiary (? : ) operator
Keywords: tertiary, lvalue, ternary
Message-ID: <612@cybaswan.UUCP>
Date: 18 Aug 89 14:54:49 GMT
Organization: Institute for Industrial Information Technology
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