The ternary is a:
Many people call it the ternary operator, because it's the only ternary (three operand) operator in many language.
The first expression must be of type boolean or Boolean, or a compile-time error occurs.
Ternary means that the number of argument (arity) of this operator is three. See Arity
The conditional operator has three operand expressions:
firstBooleanOperand ? SecondOperand : ThirdOperand
where:
At run time, the first operand expression of the conditional expression is evaluated first. The resulting boolean value is then used to choose either the second or the third operand expression:
Example:
String myName = mustBeShortName ? getShortName() : getLongName();
The conditional operator is syntactically right-associative (it groups right-to-left).
a?b:c?d:e?f:g
means the same as
a?b:(c?d:(e?f:g))