Conditional Operator in Java where I don't want the false Boolean to do anything

I am a extremely beginner programming student working with Java.

For a section of an assignment I have a for loop that looks for a specific character in a string, and if it finds that character, it needs to update my count for a later section of the code. For this particular assignment, we are required to only use the conditional (ternary) operator. I have been able to complete the code using an if statement, but like I said, I need to use a conditional operator.

Is there a way for the false statement from a conditional operator to do nothing? Or should I have it update some garbage variable that doesn't matter instead?

This works

if (someString.charAt(i) == someChar) {
    someInt++;
}

But trying to get this working

someString.charAt(i) == someChar ? someInt++ : (this right here);

Maybe something like this can help?

    public int answer(String input, char match) {
        int counter = 0;
        for (final char character : input.toCharArray()) {
            counter += character == match ? 1 : 0;
        }
        return counter;
    }

public static int count(String str, char ch) {
    return str.isEmpty() ? 0 : (str.charAt(0) == ch ? 1 : 0) + count(str.substring(1), ch);
}