Java, A Beginner's Guide, 5th Edition, 5th Edition

The switch Statement

The second of Java’s selection statements is the switch. The switch provides for a multiway branch. Thus, it enables a program to select among several alternatives. Although a series of nested if statements can perform multiway tests, for many situations the switch is a more efficient approach. It works like this: the value of an expression is successively tested against a list of constants. When a match is found, the statement sequence associated with that match is executed. The general form of the switch statement is

For versions of Java prior to JDK 7, the expression controlling the switch must be of type byte, short, ...