Editing Ternary conditional operator (section)

===Initialization===
An important use of the conditional operator is in allowing a single initialization statement, rather than multiple initialization statements. In many cases this also allows [[single assignment]] and for an identifier to be a [[constant (computer programming)|constant]].

The simplest benefit is avoiding duplicating the variable name, as in Python:

<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
x = 'foo' if b else 'bar'
</syntaxhighlight>

instead of:

<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
if b:
    x = 'foo'
else:
    x = 'bar'
</syntaxhighlight>

More importantly, in languages with [[block scope]], such as C++, the blocks of an if/else statement create new scopes, and thus variables must be declared ''before'' the if/else statement, as:

<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp">
std::string s;
if (b)
    s = "foo";
else
    s = "bar";
</syntaxhighlight>

Use of the conditional operator simplifies this:

<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp">
std::string s = b ? "foo" : "bar";
</syntaxhighlight>

Furthermore, since initialization is now part of the declaration, rather than a separate statement, the identifier can be a constant (formally, of [[const (computer programming)|{{code|const}}]] type):

<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp">
const std::string s = b ? "foo" : "bar";
</syntaxhighlight>