PHP: Shorthand for if and else

Today I want to give you a brief tip along the way, which nevertheless can save a lot of work and can make your code easier to read. It is a abbreviated form for if and else, that not many know.

Let's have a look at an example. We want to output a string and depending on the gender, we want to write "Mr." or "Mrs." The long version of if and else will look something like this:

echo 'We appreciate ';
 
if ($gender == 1) {
   echo 'Mrs ';
} else {
   echo 'Mr ';
}
 
echo $name,' warmly.';

But it is possible to do it shorter. An identical result we get with the short form of if and else:

echo 'We appreciate ',($gender==1?'Mrs ':'Mr '),$name,' warmly';

Especially in this case, the shorthand is more than usefull in clarity and brevity.

To apply the short notation, we must only write the condition infront of a question mark, and then join the two cases separated by a colon behind it. In the example, you can easily retrace the rewriting of a normal if/else statement in the shorthand code.