Switch | What Is The Difference In if/else And Switch Statement In Java?

Here in this tutorial, we will draw some Difference In if/else And switch Statement In Java. The switch is used for comparing integers and character values where as if-else can be used for comparing any data type. There are many more differences between the two that we will discuss here.

Conditional Operators

there are two conditional operators in java which are if-else and switch case let’s discuss them in detail.

If-else Statements

If-else statement is a statement that is used for checking the conditions or we can say compare the entities to get a boolean result and follow particular steps if it is true and another path to follow if the condition given is false.

You can understand it by an example

Let’s see the syntax of the same:

if (condition) {
    // Block of code if condition true
} else {
    // Block of code is condition false
}

Here we can see we have provided if where the condition to check is provided and below that the block of code is being given which needs to be executed on finding that as true otherwise another block of false if there o be executed if the above condition is false.

It works as binary either yes or no, So now let’s talk about another conditional Operator which is the Switch case.

Switch- Case Statement

Switch case statements have some limitations as compared to if-else as if-else can be used for any kind of data type like it can be used even for String, float, Integers, or character but herein the case of Switch case is different.

In the Switch case, we can only use Integers and Char data types as input to compare and there are a set of possible outcomes that need to be pre-defined as to how many possible conditions could be there.

In case we simply specify the possible outcome of the switch and design the output which should be there in case any of the cases matches with the input.

Or we can say we design in such a way that if one condition is matched the output corresponding to that will be executed until it encounters a break statement of a return statement to come out of the condition.

Let’s make the picture clear with one example

witch (month) {
    case 1:
    case 3:
    case 5:
    case 7:
    case 8:
    case 10:
    case 12:
        cout << "31";
        break;
    case 2:
        cout << "28 or 29";
        break;
    case 4:
    case 6:
    case 9:
    case 11:
        cout << "30";
        break;
    default:
        cout << "Not a valid month!"; 
        break
}

Here a program to find the number of days in a month is designed and we know in which month how many days could occur so we design in that way only.

As you can see the break statements are always there just after every statement so it should not continue printing the output leading to the match found.

As it does not check for the condition once it found a match

 

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