java - What does "?" and ":" do in boolean statements?

I think this question is a general programming question,

but let's assume I'm asking this for Java.

what does the following statement do ?

return a ? (b || c) : (b && c);

I have seen the syntax with ?'s and :'s in many topics at SO, this particular one I found in Check if at least two out of three booleans are true

But I don't know what they mean, so how to use them, and I believe it's something very useful for me.

Thanks !

Answer

That's the conditional operator. It means something like:

condition ? value-if-true : value-if-false;

So in your case, it returns b || c if a is true, and b && c if a is false.