I have a whole bunch of tests on variables in a bash (3.00) shell script where if the variable is not set, then it assigns a default, e.g.:

if [ -z "${VARIABLE}" ]; then 
    FOO='default'
else 
    FOO=${VARIABLE}
fi

I seem to recall there's some syntax to doing this in one line, something resembling a ternary operator, e.g.:

FOO=${ ${VARIABLE} : 'default' }

(though I know that won't work...)

Am I crazy, or does something like that exist?