Advantage of switch over if-else statement

Question

What's the best practice for using a switch statement vs using an if statement for 30 unsigned enumerations where about 10 have an expected action (that presently is the same action). Performance and space need to be considered but are not critical. I've abstracted the snippet so don't hate me for the naming conventions.

switch statement:

// numError is an error enumeration type, with 0 being the non-error case
// fire_special_event() is a stub method for the shared processing

switch (numError)
{  
  case ERROR_01 :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_07 :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_0A :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_10 :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_15 :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_16 :  // intentional fall-through
  case ERROR_20 :
  {
     fire_special_event();
  }
  break;

  default:
  {
    // error codes that require no additional action
  }
  break;       
}

if statement:

if ((ERROR_01 == numError)  ||
    (ERROR_07 == numError)  ||
    (ERROR_0A == numError)  || 
    (ERROR_10 == numError)  ||
    (ERROR_15 == numError)  ||
    (ERROR_16 == numError)  ||
    (ERROR_20 == numError))
{
  fire_special_event();
}

Answer 1

Code for readability. If you want to know what performs better, use a profiler, as optimizations and compilers vary, and performance issues are rarely where people think they are.

Answer 2

I know its old but

public class SwitchTest {
static final int max = 100000;

public static void main(String[] args) {

int counter1 = 0;
long start1 = 0l;
long total1 = 0l;

int counter2 = 0;
long start2 = 0l;
long total2 = 0l;
boolean loop = true;

start1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
while (true) {
  if (counter1 == max) {
    break;
  } else {
    counter1++;
  }
}
total1 = System.currentTimeMillis() - start1;

start2 = System.currentTimeMillis();
while (loop) {
  switch (counter2) {
    case max:
      loop = false;
      break;
    default:
      counter2++;
  }
}
total2 = System.currentTimeMillis() - start2;

System.out.println("While if/else: " + total1 + "ms");
System.out.println("Switch: " + total2 + "ms");
System.out.println("Max Loops: " + max);

System.exit(0);
}
}

Varying the loop count changes a lot:

While if/else: 5ms Switch: 1ms Max Loops: 100000

While if/else: 5ms Switch: 3ms Max Loops: 1000000

While if/else: 5ms Switch: 14ms Max Loops: 10000000

While if/else: 5ms Switch: 149ms Max Loops: 100000000

(add more statements if you want)

Answer 3

Use switch.

In the worst case the compiler will generate the same code as a if-else chain, so you don't lose anything. If in doubt put the most common cases first into the switch statement.

In the best case the optimizer may find a better way to generate the code. Common things a compiler does is to build a binary decision tree (saves compares and jumps in the average case) or simply build a jump-table (works without compares at all).

Answer 4

I agree with the compacity of the switch solution but IMO you're hijacking the switch here.
The purpose of the switch is to have different handling depending on the value.
If you had to explain your algo in pseudo-code, you'd use an if because, semantically, that's what it is: if whatever_error do this...
So unless you intend someday to change your code to have specific code for each error, I would use if.

Answer 5

Im not the person to tell you about speed and memory usage, but looking at a switch statment is a hell of a lot easier to understand then a large if statement (especially 2-3 months down the line)