A question about the tertiary (? : ) operator

[Steve Hosgood]

I never noticed until last night that the conditional operator:

<condition>? <val1>: <val2>

..is not a valid lvalue, even if both <val1> and <val2> are lvalues!
I wanted to say:

(flag > 0? foo: bar) = <complex expression>;

..which didn't work, needless to say. I had to employ a temporary variable
and an 'if' statement in the end :-(.

Is there a good reason for this behaviour?
Thanks in advance
Steve

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Steve Hosgood BSc,                             | Phone (+44) 792 295213
Image Processing and Systems Engineer,         | Fax   (+44) 792 295532
Institute for Industrial Information Techology,| Telex 48149
Innovation Centre, University of Wales,        | JANET: iiitsh at uk.ac.swan.pyr
Swansea SA2 8PP                                | UUCP: ..!ukc!cybaswan!iiitsh
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