Talk:Ternary operation

Operation vs operator
Why is ternary operation sharing a page with ternary operator? Although similar and related concepts, they are not exactly the same. A ternary operation in mathematics maps $$ A\times A \times A \longrightarrow A $$. Whereas a ternary operator is just something that takes three arguments. A vector triple product is an example of a ternary operator but it is not a ternary operation, since it takes three vectors and gives a scalar result.

I would propose separating the two pages with links from each pointing toward the other for people who find themselves in the wrong place.--Hawthorn 13:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Citation for ternary/tertiary
Where is the citation [1], for "ternary" instead of "tertiary".Naveen Kumar Molleti (talk) 13:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)Nav11aug
 * Agreed. I originally made the edit to tertiary being a proper use, and do not agree with its invalidity. The citation given (which does not show up properly in wiki, I assume because of the colon in the url, and cannot be reached on the webserver that hosts it [had to use google cache]) itself gives no real proof. If I do not see a proper citation on this soon I will revert the edit, as I believe my citation (Microsoft) to be a more valid reference than a random guy on a forum. Dakusan (talk) 08:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thirded. The reference only says that "tertiary" is incorrect without reason.  Ternary is clearly correct by extension of unary, binary, etc.  IMO, "tertiary" is not wrong: it means third order, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to call it.  You wouldn't say "secondary" because that could mean "of lesser importance", but you might say "second order". Kjsharke (talk) 17:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Move examples?
As the first section states, the ?: operator is just one kind of ternary operators. Why do we have a verbose list of only one of the ternary operators? This list should be moved to the ternary conditional operator.

As examples we should list the different types instead, such as ?: in many programming languages, and maybe SQL BETWEEN AND as another (Value1 BETWEEN Value2 AND Value3). --Vbakke (talk) 21:22, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the examples should be moved to the page about the conditional ternary operator and merged with the existing examples there. They shouldn't just be deleted; maybe there are details in the examples here that are missing in the examples there. I also agree that this page should focus on listing examples of ternary operators, as you mention. Jhertel (talk) 21:25, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Melchoir (talk) 02:22, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Closure of A under x
The main body paragraph states that $$ A\times A \times A \longrightarrow A $$. Is this a necessary condition for the operation, or should it actually be $$ A\times A \times A \longrightarrow Y $$, for the codomain $$ Y $$? — Preceding unsigned comment added by XRubbermaid (talk • contribs) 12:52, 3 June 2014 (UTC)