java - ternary operator not working

Question

Netbeans is saying that my ternary operator isn't a statement. How come?

int direction;
direction = (Math.random() < 0.5) ? 0 : 1; // direction is either L or R (0 or 1)
direction == 0 ? System.out.print('L') : System.out.print('R');

I tried it's if/then/else counterpart and it works fine:

int direction;
direction = (Math.random() < 0.5) ? 0 : 1; // direction is either L or R (0 or 1)
if(direction == 0){
    System.out.print('L');
} else {
    System.out.print('R');
}

Answer 1

The statements in the ternary operator need to be non-void. They need to return something.

System.out.println(direction == 0 ? 'L' : 'R');