Why does this basic Java boolean expression not work?

Question

Why does this not compute in Java (v1.8). Seems perfectly logical to me....

boolean banana = true;
(banana == true || false) ? System.out.println("True") : System.out.println("False");

Output message: Error: java: not a statement

Answer 1

The ternary conditional operator must return a value. The second and third operands can't be statements that don't return anything. They must be expressions that return a value.

You could switch it to :

System.out.println(banana ? "True" : "False");

Note that banana == true || false is equivalent to banana == true, which is equivalent to banana as banana itself is a boolean type.