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Discussion on: We don't need a ternary operator

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

No, because I'm not allowing "falsey" conditions, which I consider a failure in a language. false is a distinct value from an unset optional, and true is not the same as an optional with a value.

Having hard optional semantics allows this to work. Using truthy and falsey evaluations this fails.

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

A condition can obviously be false, but I guess that's not what you meant. For the sake of this argument, let's assume that condition c is true, value x is false and y is 1; in most languages, c ? x : y would result in false, whereas c && x || y would result in 1.

If I understood you correctly, c ? false | 1 in leaf would too result in 1, thus breaking the original logic of a ternary operator.

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

No, c ? false | 1 would evaluate to false in Leaf. The | operator applies only to optional types, not truthy values.