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Did nobody notice the '<- Rhetorical' in my post ... no?
>> easily infer what a= min(a,b) meant, while a<?=b is not nearly so obvious.
True true. But, while it isn't obvious, it is ... (somewhat) decipherable if you know how to use the ? : operator and know about < and > than's.
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That operator is definitely one of those that illudes me. Probably there is some explanation for it other than just "it is quicker to write". However let it be said that the operator is more commonly used in this form:
int low = x <? y;
Which probably better shows the advantages. Less typing, less prone to bugs, more easily debuggable just from looking at the code.
All in all, we could extend this conversation to operators like ->, ->* and the compound assignment operators which invariably are nothing more than a shorthand to ease on the code and make things more readable and consequently easier to debug.