catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  switch statement
       
           (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("Hello\n");	/* fall through */
          	case 2:  printf("Goodbye\n"); break;
          	case 3:  printf("Fish\n"); break;
          	default: fprintf(stderr, "Odd foo value\n"); exit(1);
          	
       
          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.
       
          (1997-01-30)