How do you use the Optional variable in a ternary conditional operator?

Question

I want to use an Optional variable with the ternary conditional operator but it is throwing error this error: optional cannot be used as boolean. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

To add on the already very good answers, sometimes you need the convenience of the ternary operator but also need to perform changes on the wrapped value, such as;

var fullName = lastName != nil ? "\(firsName) \(lasName!)" : firstName

But you don't want to force unwrap (even though this situation would be fine).

Then you can actually use Optional.map:

var fullName = lastName.map({ "\(firstName) \($0)" }) ?? firstName

The completion block passed to .map is only called if the wrapped value ($0) is not nil. Otherwise, that function just returns nil, which you can then easily coalesce with the ?? operator.