Ternary Operator Question (with regex).

Question

Hi, I was learning regex in java and wrote a program which tests a string to see if it is an email address.
import javax.swing.*;
public class IsEmailAddress
     public static void main(String[] args)
          String address = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter an email address");
          if(address.matches("[a-zA-Z0-9\\.]+@\\w+\\.{1}\\w+"))
               JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "It is an email address");
          else
               JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "It is not an email address");
}The above program works correctly. But then I decided to try and make the program only one line inside the main:
import javax.swing.*;
public class IsEmailAddress
     public static void main(String[] args)
          JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter an email address").matches("[a-zA-Z0-9\\.]+@\\w+\\.{1}\\w+") ? JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "It is an email address") : JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "It is not an email address");
}I get the compilation error not a statement, what am I doing wrong? Is this even possible?
Thanks for any help

Answer 1

I would never use a piece of code like that as part of a bigger program, I wanted to see if it was possible and maybe to learn something about the ternary operator.
Keeping in mind what you said about the ternary operator having to return something, I was able to make it work:
import javax.swing.*;
public class IsEmailAddress
     public static void main(String[] args)
          int a = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter an email address").matches("[a-zA-Z0-9\\.]+@\\w+\\.{1}\\w+") ? JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(null, "It is an email address","Is it an email Adress?",JOptionPane.CANCEL_OPTION,JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE,null,null,null) : JOptionPane.showOptionDialog(null, "It is not an email address","Is it an email Adress?",JOptionPane.CANCEL_OPTION,JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE,null,null,null);
}I chose showOptionDialog because it returns a static int.
Thank you for your help!!!