1. 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 foox, y case 1: printf"Hello ";/* fall through */ case 2: printf"Goodbye "; break; case 3: printf"Fish "; break; default: fprintfstderr, "Odd foo value "; exit1; 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 Fortrans computed goto.
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