Switch Statement

The switch statement in C is another way to make decisions in your program. It is often used when you have many specific values to check against the same variable. It can make your code cleaner than using many else-if statements.

Syntax:

switch (expression) {
    case value1:
        // code block
        break;
    case value2:
        // code block
        break;
    ...
    default:
        // default code block
}

Example:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    int day = 3;

    switch (day) {
        case 1:
            printf("Monday\n");
            break;
        case 2:
            printf("Tuesday\n");
            break;
        case 3:
            printf("Wednesday\n");
            break;
        case 4:
            printf("Thursday\n");
            break;
        case 5:
            printf("Friday\n");
            break;
        case 6:
            printf("Saturday\n");
            break;
        case 7:
            printf("Sunday\n");
            break;
        default:
            printf("Invalid day\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

How it Works:

• The expression inside switch() is evaluated.
• The program checks each case to find a match.
• When a match is found, that code block runs.
• The break statement stops the switch from running the next cases.
• If no cases match, the default block (if present) will run.

When to Use switch:

• When you want to compare a single variable to many constant values
• When if-else chains become long and hard to read