Understanding a Ternary Statement [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

Ternary operator (4 answers)

Closed 8 years ago.

I'm ready thought some old code and have come across this :

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : ($_REQUEST['sal'] ? (Valid($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : false) : null);

I'm trying to work out what it does. I know it's doing some form of validation at one point.. but how do I revert this back to a simple if elseif statement ?

So I can understand exactly what it's doing ?

Answer 1

The following ternary operation

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : ($_REQUEST['sal'] ? (Valid($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : false) : null);

Is the same as the following if statement:

if(isset($_REQUEST['c_sal'])){
    $sal = " ";
} else {
    if($_REQUEST['sal']){
        if(Valid($_REQUEST['sal'])){
             $sal = $__REQUEST['sal'];
        else {
             $sal = false;
        }
    } else {
        $sal = null;
    }
}

---

EDIT: For your info. The ternary without your function:

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : (isset($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : null);

Answer 2

Just split it up into the if/else equivalents:

$sal = null;

if (isset($_REQUEST['c_sal'])) {
  $sal = " ";
} else {
 if ($_REQUEST['sal']) {
   if (Valid($_REQUEST['sal'])) {
     $sal = $_REQUEST['sal'];
   } else {
     $sal = false;
   }
  } else {
    $sal = null;
  }
}