The D Programming Language: switches

[Eddie Wyatt]

 >>
 >>Yes, in a sense switch is less powerful than an else-if chain.  Let's keep it,
 >>for the same reasons that we retain flow constructs less powerful than goto.
 >>
 > 	Theoretically the switch construct is more powerful than an else-if
 > chain because it selects in one step.  Execution is O(1) rather than O(n)
 > where n is the number of branches.  It is, for example, considerably more
 > efficient to use a switch with a thousand cases than an else-if chain with
 > a thousand elses.  [This is not to be taken as an endorsement of such
 > code. :-)]

  I think he meant in terms of expressability.  Which is true in a
practical sense, false in theorectically.  'switch' and 'else-if'
are equivalent in terms of expressability.


-- 

Eddie Wyatt 				e-mail: edw at ius1.cs.cmu.edu