confused about ? and : in a line of code for lcm

[jh5711]

I am researching ways to calculate lcm and came across this line and am trying to understand what it is saying, or possibly a more basic way to write it

lcm = (userNum1 > userNum2) ? userNum1 : userNum2;

The code runs fine, but if I don't understand it, I'm not going to be able to comprehend how to use it later.

[weaknessforcats]

The ?: is the ternary operator from C. It's the same thing as

if (userNum1 > userNum2)
{
    icm = userNum1;
}
else
{
    icm = userNum2;
}

The theory is that the less code you write the less assembly code will be generated by the compiler. So a ?: will be the same as if/else but will produce less object code than if/else.

Now this was all true in 1968 with an 8-bit word on a machine with 32K memory.

With today's processors you can ignore any benefit obtained by ?:. I wouldn't use it myself.

[donbock]

The ternary operator offers a potential marginal benefit when used like the OP code example; you only type the left-side variable name once so you don't have a chance to accidentally type different names in the two legs of the if-else.

[donbock]

The ternary operator is one of the goto-constructs in The Obfuscated C contest:
http://scrammed.blogspot.com/2012/04...-its-best.html