[deltacoder1020]

are you sure it's not

int hi = 0;

return hi ? 1 : 0;

what i've just written is equivalent to this:

int hi = 0;

if(hi) return 1;
else return 0;

basically, the code

a ? b : c;

means "replace this with b is a is true, otherwise, replace this with c"

so you could use

var1 += (x>2 ? 4 : 1);

to increment var1 by 4 if x is greater than 2, but only by 1 if x is less than or equal to 2.

it's more than just a compact way of doing if statements, as i've illustrated - you can't embed a if statement in an expression, whereas you can embed the ternary operator.