why does parenthesis needed for assignment in second part of conditional operator in c

Question

The code below

i>0?j=9:i=7;

Is giving an error:

lvalue required as left operand of assignment

Can you explain this why I am getting this error? when, i>0?j=9:(i=7); is working correctly

Answer 1

Imho: basically your problem is that is C the termary operator has higher priority than "=" (in c++ the prioriy is equal, so it works as expected) and that is the reason you need the parenthesis.