Ternary-like construct for creating variables

[tobie]

I find it very common to need a ternary operator-like construct when creating variables, for example:

1.  Let |foo| be |x| if |condition| and |y| otherwise.

The infra standard suggests this needs to be defined like so:

1.  Let |foo| be null.
1.  If |condition|, then set |foo| to |x|.
1.  Otherwise, then set |foo| to |y|.

This seems unnecessarily verbose. Could we allow the shorthand version somehow?

[annevk]

I think we should, I use that shorthand a lot, with parentheses around the conditional.