Alternative to if /else statements

PHP Coding Tutorials | Submited May 3, 2008

Written by: John

If you have a bunch of if / else statements for one variable then this method would be a lot better to use. Heres an example of what you would currently have in your coding

$check = 'yes';
if($check == 'yes'){
echo 'go';
} else {
echo 'stop';
}

The above would simple return "go" because $check does equal yes, but we could write that totally different like the following example

$check = 'yes';
$do = ($check == 'yes') ? 'go' : 'stop';
echo $do;

The above will output "go" because $check does equal yes as you can see right before it. If $check did not equal 'yes' and instead equaled 'no' $do would echo out "stop".

So, its almost like saying
$variable = (if $check == 'yes') ? true : false;

true in the above statement would always be true as long as $check is aslways "yes"