Ternary Operator Inside PHP String

Question

I want to evaluate a simple ternary operator inside of a string and can't seem to find the correct syntax.

My code looks like this:

foreach ($this->team_bumpbox as $index=>$member) 
    echo ".... class='{((1) ? abc : def)}'>....";

but I can't seem to get it to work properly. Any ideas on how to implement this?

Emulous

String concatenation if you want to use arbitrary expressions. In double quoted strings only simple variable and array syntax works, or variable expressions. Neither of which you have here. – Coonhound

Presumably a real example doesn't have "1" as the conditional argument? – Bobbibobbie

yeah, real example would have a true expression. Just curious, as the syntax would look really nice imo :) – Emulous

Exactly how is PHP supposed to know that something inside a string is actually php code? That's YOUR job to tell it. – Muckrake

Answer 1

You can't do it inside the string, per se. You need to dot-concatenate. Something like this:

echo ".... class='" . (1 ? "abc" : "def") . "'>....";

Phosphoresce

Answer 2

Well, you can do it actually:

$if = function($test, $true, $false)
{
  return $test ? $true : $false;
};

echo "class='{$if(true, 'abc', 'def')}'";

I'll let you decide whether it is pure elegance or pure madness. However note that unlike the real conditional operator, both arguments to the function are always evaluated. Once you can evaluate arbitrary functions however, there is nothing stopping you from using this with any general expression:

$expr = function($x)
{
  return $x;
};

echo "class='{$eval(true ? 'abc' : 'def')}'";

Crusade