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The switch Statement

Use the switch statement to conditionally perform statements based on an integer expression. Following is a sample program, SwitchDemo, that declares an integer named month whose value supposedly represents the month in a date. The program displays the name of the month, based on the value of month, using the switch statement:

public class SwitchDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int month = 8;
        switch (month) {
            case 1:  System.out.println("January"); break;
            case 2:  System.out.println("February"); break;
            case 3:  System.out.println("March"); break;
            case 4:  System.out.println("April"); break;
            case 5:  System.out.println("May"); break;
            case 6:  System.out.println("June"); break;
            case 7:  System.out.println("July"); break;
            case 8:  System.out.println("August"); break;
            case 9:  System.out.println("September"); break;
            case 10: System.out.println("October"); break;
            case 11: System.out.println("November"); break;
            case 12: System.out.println("December"); break;
        }
    }
}

The switch statement evaluates its expression, in this case the value of month, and executes the appropriate case statement. Thus, the output of the program is: August. Of course, you could implement this by using an if statement:

int month = 8;
if (month == 1) {
    System.out.println("January");
} else if (month == 2) {
    System.out.println("February");
}
. . . // and so on

Deciding whether to use an if statement or a switch statement is a judgment call. You can decide which to use, based on readability and other factors. An if statement can be used to make decisions based on ranges of values or conditions, whereas a switch statement can make decisions based only on a single integer value. Also, the value provided to each case statement must be unique.

Another point of interest in the switch statement is the break statement after each case. Each break statement terminates the enclosing switch statement, and the flow of control continues with the first statement following the switch block. The break statements are necessary because without them, the case statements fall through. That is, without an explicit break, control will flow sequentially through subsequent case statements. Following is an example, SwitchDemo2, which illustrates why it might be useful to have case statements fall through:

public class SwitchDemo2 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        int month = 2;
        int year = 2000;
        int numDays = 0;

        switch (month) {
            case 1:
            case 3:
            case 5:
            case 7:
            case 8:
            case 10:
            case 12:
                numDays = 31;
                break;
            case 4:
            case 6:
            case 9:
            case 11:
                numDays = 30;
                break;
            case 2:
                if ( ((year % 4 == 0) && !(year % 100 == 0))
                     || (year % 400 == 0) )
                    numDays = 29;
                else
                    numDays = 28;
                break;
        }
        System.out.println("Number of Days = " + numDays);
    }
}

The output from this program is:

Number of Days = 29

Technically, the final break is not required because flow would fall out of the switch statement anyway. However, we recommend using a break for the last case statement just in case you need to add more case statements at a later date. This makes modifying the code easier and less error-prone.

You will see break used to terminate loops in Branching Statements.

Finally, you can use the default statement at the end of the switch to handle all values that aren't explicitly handled by one of the case statements.

int month = 8;
. . .
switch (month) {
    case 1:  System.out.println("January"); break;
    case 2:  System.out.println("February"); break;
    case 3:  System.out.println("March"); break;
    case 4:  System.out.println("April"); break;
    case 5:  System.out.println("May"); break;
    case 6:  System.out.println("June"); break;
    case 7:  System.out.println("July"); break;
    case 8:  System.out.println("August"); break;
    case 9:  System.out.println("September"); break;
    case 10: System.out.println("October"); break;
    case 11: System.out.println("November"); break;
    case 12: System.out.println("December"); break;
    default: System.out.println("Hey, that's not a valid month!"); break;
}

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