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title: Why a Ternary Operator is not a Conditional Operator in JS
description: Until recently, I called a ternary operator a conditional operator in JavaScript. But I just learned that this isn't correct. In this tutorial, I will explain...
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# Why a Ternary Operator is not a Conditional Operator in JS

**[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · [@dillionmegida](https://daily.dev/dillionmegida) · 3 min read · 76 upvotes · 6 comments

## Summary

Until recently, I called a ternary operator a conditional operator in JavaScript. But I just learned that this isn't correct. In this tutorial, I will explain how I learned this, and hopefully it teaches you something new. I have a video version on this topic you can watch as well to supplement your learning.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-a-ternary-operator-is-not-a-conditional-operator-in-js/>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@ghost** · 4 upvotes

> Great article, it is really helpful to understand the difference between a ternary operator and a conditional operator. I appreciated how this article also mentioned that the confusion comes from the fact that the conditional operator is the only ternary operator in JavaScript, but in other languages there could be more examples of the ternary operator. Thanks for sharing.

**@betweennames** · 3 upvotes

> I've literally never thought about this before, and it makes so much sense. It's always confused me why this concept has been called the "3 operator" everywhere
>
> C# and JS are the two primary places I've seen it, but now looking at the C# docs they're very clear that is not it's name.. this is crazy!
>
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/operators/conditional-operator)
>
> >The conditional operator `?:`, also known as the ternary conditional operator

**@ishaan\_codes** · 1 upvotes

> Elaborative enough.

**@dvmstzzy** · 0 upvotes

> anyone can suggest me a web to learn js?

**@aryanbabber** · 0 upvotes

> Good one!!

---

Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-a-ternary-operator-is-not-a-conditional-operator-in-js-zaxpay8bs)

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