The ‘?’ operator in PHP is called the ternary operator, also known as the conditional operator. It is a shorthand way of writing an if-else statement in a single line.
The syntax of the ternary operator is as follows:
condition ? true-expression : false-expression;
Here, condition is the condition that we want to check. If the condition is true, true-expression is executed, and if the condition is false, false-expression is executed.
For example, consider the following code:
$age = 20;
$isAdult = ($age >= 18) ? true : false;
if ($isAdult) {
echo "You are an adult";
} else {
echo "You are not an adult";
}
In this code, we define a variable $age with a value of 20. We then use the ternary operator to check if $age is greater than or equal to 18. If it is, the expression true is assigned to the variable $isAdult, otherwise the expression false is assigned to $isAdult.
Finally, we use an if-else statement to check the value of $isAdult, and output a message based on whether the person is an adult or not.
The ternary operator can be a useful tool for simplifying code, particularly in cases where you need to assign a value to a variable based on a single condition. However, it can also make code harder to read and understand if overused or used excessively.