Advantage of Switch Over If-Else Statement

Advantage of switch over if-else statement

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).

Why Switch/Case and not If/Else If?

Summarising my initial post and comments - there are several advantages of switch statement over if/else statement:

Cleaner code. Code with multiple chained if/else if ... looks messy and is difficult to maintain - switch gives cleaner structure.
Performance. For dense case values compiler generates jump table, for sparse - binary search or series of if/else, so in worst case switch is as fast as if/else, but typically faster. Although some compilers can similarly optimise if/else.
Test order doesn't matter. To speed up series of if/else tests one needs to put more likely cases first. With switch/case programmer doesn't need to think about this.
Default can be anywhere. With if/else default case must be at the very end - after last else. In switch - default can be anywhere, wherever programmer finds it more appropriate.
Common code. If you need to execute common code for several cases, you may omit break and the execution will "fall through" - something you cannot achieve with if/else. (There is a good practice to place a special comment /* FALLTHROUGH */ for such cases - lint recognises it and doesn't complain, without this comment it does complain as it is common error to forgot break).

Thanks to all commenters.

When to use If-else if-else over switch statements and vice versa

As with most things you should pick which to use based on the context and what is conceptually the correct way to go. A switch is really saying "pick one of these based on this variables value" but an if statement is just a series of boolean checks.

As an example, if you were doing:

int value = // some value
if (value == 1) {
    doThis();
} else if (value == 2) {
    doThat();
} else {
    doTheOther();
}

This would be much better represented as a switch as it then makes it immediately obviously that the choice of action is occurring based on the value of "value" and not some arbitrary test.

Also, if you find yourself writing switches and if-elses and using an OO language you should be considering getting rid of them and using polymorphism to achieve the same result if possible.

Finally, regarding switch taking longer to type, I can't remember who said it but I did once read someone ask "is your typing speed really the thing that affects how quickly you code?" (paraphrased)

Is else if faster than switch() case?

For just a few items, the difference is small. If you have many items you should definitely use a switch.

If a switch contains more than five items, it's implemented using a lookup table or a hash list. This means that all items get the same access time, compared to a list of if:s where the last item takes much more time to reach as it has to evaluate every previous condition first.

Case vs If Else If: Which is more efficient?

It seems that the compiler is better in optimizing a switch-statement than an if-statement.

The compiler doesn't know if the order of evaluating the if-statements is important to you, and can't perform any optimizations there. You could be calling methods in the if-statements, influencing variables. With the switch-statement it knows that all clauses can be evaluated at the same time and can put them in whatever order is most efficient.

Here's a small comparison:

http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/SpeedTestIfElseSwitch.aspx

if else vs switch performance in java

Switch perf is better than if else as in case of switch there will be one time evaluation . Once it evaluated the switch it knows which case needs to be executed but in case of if else it has to go through all conditions in case of worst scenario.

The longer the list condition, better will be switch performance but for shorter list (just two conditions), it can be slower also

From Why switch is faster than if

With switch the JVM loads the value to compare and iterates through
the value table to find a match, which is faster in most cases

Is there any reason to use switch statement instead of strings of if and elseif?

They may well compile to the same code. But the intent is not necessarily to provide better compiled code so much as it is to provide better source code.

You can do while or for loops with if and goto as well but that doesn't make while and for useless. Would you rather have:

for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
    doSomethingWith (i);

or:

    i = 0;
loop12:
    if (! (i < 10))
        goto skip12
    doSomethingWith (i);
    i++;
    goto loop12
skip12:

Advantage of Switch Over If-Else Statement