Comments on: Switch vs. If

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:59:00 +0000

@Patryk – that may work, but man is it ugly and counter-intuitive.

By: Patryk Januszewski

Patryk Januszewski — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:25:58 +0000

I noticed that you mentioned at the end of your post that the switch is great for value matching, but I’ve also used it for more complex logical matches as well (since everything really just get processed down to a value. I’ve done the following to replace an if-else-if :

switch (true) {
case isset($donkey['face']):
…
break;
case isset($donkey['pants']):
…
break;
case isset($donkey['butt']):
…
break;
}

Just sharing :)

By: doro

doro — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:34:53 +0000

i was wondering about the same thing, for some reason lately i like using switch more.. good to see that there’s no speed problem :)

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:04:34 +0000

Frankly, I couldn’t care less that the switch statement is X milliseconds faster or slower in Y fringe scenarios.

If you’re replacing your if statements with switch statements and each case has a break after it, you’re misusing the language’s features.

In my code, scenarios where switch is the right tool for the job are extremely rare and, when I find myself in such a position, I often ask myself if there’s a better way to do what I’m trying.

This vaguely reminds me of explaining to someone why you don’t use the bold tag in markup, you use the strong tag.

This is all completely beside preference. I have no idea how anyone could find a switch statement prettier than an if/else. PHP has C-style brackets for a reason.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:12:08 +0000

Hmm, what was the setup (os, php v, etc), one wonders. Tested 100,000,000 iterations with php 5.3.2 on windows+freebsd+ubuntu server (both scripts noticeably slower in windows – surprise!). Very little difference. Have they changed if vs switch behavior perhaps? @pj: I’d guess yes. Do the same. Easier to read and make changes (debugging e.g.)

By: andre.roesti

andre.roesti — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:28:29 +0000

Every Millisecond counts. Thanks for sharing it.

By: pj

pj — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:34:27 +0000

Thanks a lot! I got to the “PHP Switch” chapter of PHP Basic course at W3Schools.com and immediately wondered about (and googled) the difference between if vs switch. Thanks to you I learned when to use each one!

Also, beginner question: I see you use curly braces { and } even when you only have 1 line to be executed for a certain if or elseif statement. I assume you do this just out of habit?

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:13:19 +0000

Thanks for this! Was just wondering about the same thing.