How to IIF Equivalent in C#

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use the IIF Equivalent in C# and other alternatives.

IIF stands for immediate if and is available in the Visual Basic programming language. In a single line, you can pass a particular condition and specify the values to be returned if the condition is found to be true or false.

IIF(condition, True, False)

While C# does not have an exact equivalent to this, you can use the ? operator.

C# ? Operator

A ternary operator, also commonly known as a conditional operator, is an operator that accepts three operands rather than the usual one or two, which most operators use. In this case, the ? operator simplifies an if-else block. The general structure of using the ? operator is as follows:

string string_val = (anyBool ? "Value if True" : "Value if False");

Example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace StringJoin_Example {
  class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      // Initialize the integer variable a
      int a = 1;
      // Check if the condition is true
      string ternary_value = (a == 1 ? "A is Equal to One" : "A is NOT Equal to One");
      // Print the result to the console
      Console.WriteLine("Initial Value (" + a.ToString() + "): " + ternary_value);

      // Update the variable
      a = 2;
      // Re check if the conidition is still true
      ternary_value = (a == 1 ? "A is Equal to One" : "A is NOT Equal to One");
      // Print the result to the console
      Console.WriteLine("Updated Value (" + a.ToString() + "): " + ternary_value);

      Console.ReadLine();
    }
  }
}

In the example above, we created an integer variable as well as a string whose value changes depending on the value of the integer a. To set the string value, we check the value of a using the ternary operator. If a is found to be equal to one, the string will reflect that and vice versa. After changing the value of a, you can observe that the string value changes as expected in the output printed.

Output:

Initial Value (1): A is Equal to One
Updated Value (2): A is NOT Equal to One