switch statement

(programming)

(Or case statement, multi-way branch) A construct found in most high-level languages for selecting one of several possible blocks of code or branch destinations depending on the value of an expression. An example in C is

switch (foo(x, y)) case 1: printf

The break statements cause execution to continue after the whole switch statemetnt. The lack of a break statement after the first case means that execution will fall through into the second case. Since this is a common programming error you should add a comment if it is intentional.

If none of the explicit cases matches the expression value then the (optional) default case is taken.

A similar construct in some functional languages returns the value of one of several expressions selected according to the value of the first expression. A distant relation to the modern switch statement is Fortran's computed goto.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

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References in periodicals archive

In C# a switch statement may not "fall through" to the next statement if it does any work.

Trap #9: You may not "fall through" in switch statements.

Top ten traps in C# for C++ programmers: Jesse liberty... liberty assocs. (Monograph)

The semantics of the switch statement are as follows: The switch statement transfers control to one of several statements depending on the value of the expression <expr>.

The acyclic execution path complexity for the switch statement is

NPATH: a measure of execution path complexity and its applications

A set of small language changes intended to simplify common, day-to-day programming tasks: Strings in switch statements, try-with-resources statements, improved type inference for generic instance creation ("diamond"), simplified varargs method invocation, better integral literals, and improved exception handling (multi-catch)

Java 7 is now available

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