We are able to take a bit of the long-windedness of the "if, else" statement away by using conditional assignment.
a=1
b=(a==1) and "one" or "not one"
The code above is the same as the code below.
a=1
if a==1 then
b = "one"
else
b = "not one"
end
As you can see conditional assignment removes a lot of unnecessary code.