VDict mobile



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))
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)