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if |result| (evaluation)

I think you could argue for it both ways. Then you could claim ternaries are inconsistent too, shouldn't it be:

resultA : resultB ? (evaluation)

if we always put result first?

I think the most important piece of if statements and ternaries is the condition being evaluated and it's worth putting that first?

but zig has no ternaries, so it does not apply to a discussion about zig’s syntax.

and ternary is a branch with no variable introduction, so it doesn’t apply again.

(it’s basically a weak switch expression, and the value moves leftwards towards its invocation.)