Ternary Operator Puzzle: Why Isn\'t String Concatenation Working as Expected?

Ternary Operator Inquiry: Concatenation Conundrum

In this programming quandary, a curious coder encounters an unexpected result when utilizing the ternary operator and string concatenation. The original code reads as follows:

$description = 'Paper: ' . ($paperType == 'bond') ? 'Bond' : 'Other';

The intention was for the $description variable to hold the string "Paper: Bond" if $paperType equals "bond," or "Paper: Other" otherwise. However, the result obtained was merely "Bond" or "Other."

The key to resolving this issue lies in the order of operations in the ternary expression. While the ternary operator is a convenient shortcut for conditional assignments, it operates on a different precedence level than string concatenation. As a result, the concatenation operation actually occurs before the evaluation of the ternary expression.

To rectify this, the code needs to be modified to ensure that the concatenation is performed after the ternary expression evaluation. The corrected code:

$description = 'Paper: ' . ($paperType == 'bond' ? 'Bond' : 'Other');

By enclosing the ternary expression in parentheses, the code ensures that the string concatenation is performed on the result of the ternary expression, yielding the expected output of either "Paper: Bond" or "Paper: Other" based on the value of $paperType.

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