Re^3: Ternary operators: a hinderance, not a help

[Anonymous Monk]

As I state in the OP, however, my point about readability and clarity is concerned more with more complex constructs, of which that example is not one :)

I got the impression the OP condemned all use of ?:. If your opinion is "use ?: when that's readable, use if/then/else when that is", you and I agree, because that's what I do. I use ?: when I find that more readable if/then/else, otherwise, I use if/then/else.

Chained/cascading ternaries quickly lose readability, especially when combined with other code elements.

So do chained/cascading if/then/else constructs. Or nested loops, or nested indices.

Your original example, I would write either as:

my $number = $logical_test ? $value : 0;

or

my $number = $value;
   $number = 0 unless $logical_test;

or

my $number = 0;
   $number = $value if $logical_test;

depending whether I want to stress the default value of $number. (I might use one of the latter two if $logical_test is expected to have a particular value, and it not having it is an exception, I use the former line if $logical_test could go both ways).
If $logical_test is 0 if it's false, I might even write it as:

my $number = $logical_test && $value;

I wouldn't easily write:

my $number;
if ($logical_test) {
    $number = $value;
}
else {
    $number = 0;
}

as it assigns an initial value to $number in a different scope than its declaration - IMO, that doesn't score bonus points when it comes to readability. It's also 7 lines instead of 1, although it can easily be shortened to:

my $number;
if ($logical_test) {$number = $value}
else               {$number = 0}

But still, it's three lines. And worse, both blocks have two thirds of their tokens in common - which just shouts "factor out, factor out". Which would lead to:

my $number = do {if ($logical_test) {$value} else {0}};

But then I prefer:

my $number = $logical_test ? $value : 0;