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From: Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Simple if-exercises
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 07:38:08 -0400
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On 4/3/2015 2:29 AM, Volker Borchert wrote:
> Jeff Higgins wrote:
>
>> Why don't we have a Quinary operator?
>> x ? y LT : EQ : GT
>
> One of those occasions where "newer" is not "better".
> 
> I _do_ miss FORTRAN's three-way IF statement.

     I miss it, but very rarely.  It's nice in a binary search,
and it's nice in heapsort, but I can't recall other contexts
that made me wish it were still around.

     An ironic oddity: In the numerical applications for which
FORTRAN is justly famous, the three-way IF is almost never the
right thing to use!  You don't want "negative,zero,positive"
but "noticeably negative,close to zero,noticeably positive."

-- 
esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid
"Don't be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you." -- TLM