Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!g-rh
From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: The D Programming Language: switches
Message-ID: <25835@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 21 Mar 88 17:54:22 GMT
References: <222965b9@ralf.home> <941@micomvax.UUCP> <3074@haddock.ISC.COM>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 17

In article <3074@haddock.ISC.COM> karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>In article <941@micomvax.UUCP> ray@micomvax.UUCP (Ray Dunn) writes:
>
>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. :-)]
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.