Ternary Operator in Bash Script

This article is a trivial guide to the conditional operator, also known as the ternary operator, in Bash script.

Ternary Operator in Bash Script

The ternary or conditional operator is usually used as an in-line replacement of the if..else statement. In most programming languages, it uses two symbols ? and : to make a conditional statement.

A common syntax for the ternary conditional operator:

ReturnValue = expression ? trueValue : falseValue

Bash doesn’t have direct support for the conditional operator. However, this ternary operation can be achieved using the following conditional statement.

[conditional-expression] && Result1|| Result2

This expression is evaluated as if the conditional-expression is true, then the && operator will be operated, and the Result1 will be the answer. But if the conditional-expression is false, then the second logical operator || will run, and it will give Result2 as an answer.

Script:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter Your Age: "
read a;
[[ $a == 25 ]] && res="yes" || res="no"
echo "Elgibility: $res" ;

Output:

We have run the program twice from the output to get both results.