Understanding a Ternary Statement

Question

I'm ready thought some old code and have come across this :

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : ($_REQUEST['sal'] ? (Valid($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : false) : null);

I'm trying to work out what it does. I know it's doing some form of validation at one point.. but how do I revert this back to a simple if elseif statement ?

So I can understand exactly what it's doing ?

Answer 1

The following ternary operation

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : ($_REQUEST['sal'] ? (Valid($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : false) : null);

Is the same as the following if statement:

if(isset($_REQUEST['c_sal'])){
    $sal = " ";
} else {
    if($_REQUEST['sal']){
        if(Valid($_REQUEST['sal'])){
             $sal = $__REQUEST['sal'];
        else {
             $sal = false;
        }
    } else {
        $sal = null;
    }
}

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EDIT: For your info. The ternary without your function:

$sal = isset($_REQUEST['c_sal']) ? " " : (isset($_REQUEST['sal']) ? $_REQUEST['sal'] : null);