# Swift Conditionals: ternary conditional

> Learn how to use the ternary conditional operator in Swift, a shorter version of an if statement that returns one value when true and another when false.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2021-05-24 | Topics: [Swift](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/swift/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/swift-conditionals-ternary-operator/

> This tutorial belongs to the [Swift](https://flaviocopes.com/swift-introduction/) series

The ternary conditional operator is a shorter version of an `if` expression. It allows us to execute an expression if a condition is true, and another expression if the condition is false.

Here is the syntax:

```
`condition` ? `value if true` : `value if false`
```

Example:

```swift
let num1 = 1
let num2 = 2

let smallerNumber = num1 < num2 ? num1 : num2 

// smallerNumber == 1
```

The syntax is shorter than an `if` statement, and sometimes it might make more sense to use it.