Multiple conditions in ternary conditional operator?

Question

I am taking my first semester of Java programming, and we\'ve just covered the conditional operator (? :) conditions. I have two questions which seem to be wanting me to \"n

Answer 1

For the first question, you can indeed use the ternary operator, but a simpler solution would be to use a String[] with the month descriptions, and then subscript this array:

String[] months = { "jan", "feb", "mar", ... };
int month = 1; // jan
String monthDescription = months[month - 1]; // arrays are 0-indexed

Now, for your second question, the ternary operator seems more appropriate since you have fewer conditions, although an if would be much easier to read, imho:

String year = "senior";
if (credits < 30) {
  year = "freshman";
} else if (credits <= 59) {
  year = "sophomore";
} else if (credits <= 89) {
  year = "junior";
}

Contrast this with the ternary operator:

String year = credits < 30 ? "freshman" : credits <= 59 ? "sophomore" : credits <= 89 ? "junior" : "senior";