Comments on: php: IF versus SWITCH

By: Marcus Carab

Marcus Carab — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:40:13 +0000

To take this one step further, it's worth pointing out that both Switch & If should be avoided if a conditional statement isn't actually necessary at all.

In this example, let's say there was a custom message for *all twelve* months. The fastest and cleanest method would be to build an array of messages:

$messages = array("message 1", "message 2", "message 3" … etc. … );

And then to simply access the appropriate message using the month:

echo $messages[$currentmonth];

By: taranfx

taranfx — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:19:45 +0000

I recently experimented the performance, and switch is certainly faster.
What I did was auto-generated code for switch case vs. if-else for 500+ numbers and corresponding values. Switch case was approx. 20% faster at all times.

By: DynamiXLabs

DynamiXLabs — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:08:15 +0000

Well said explanation Deanzod, and thank you for your kind words!

By: Deanzod Website Design

Deanzod Website Design — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:09:09 +0000

Dave, Switch should be slightly faster than if, when there are several cases, but if should be quicker for the first example. This is debatable though. Hard to test!
Great little tutorial though.Probably the simplest explanation of the switch function I’ve seen on the net.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:12:54 +0000

Pretty good comparison/tutorial on using switch over if/else. What I would really like to know is if there is any sort of speed increase/decrease.