Best way to do a PHP switch with multiple values ver case?

Question

How would you do this PHP switch statement?

Also note that these are much smaller versions, the 1 I need to create will have a lot more values added to it.

Version 1:

switch ($p) { 
    case 'home': 
    case '': 
     $current_home = 'current';
    break; 

    case 'users.online': 
    case 'users.location': 
    case 'users.featured': 
    case 'users.new': 
    case 'users.browse': 
    case 'users.search': 
    case 'users.staff': 
     $current_users = 'current';
    break;

    case 'forum': 
     $current_forum = 'current';
    break; 
}

Version 2:

switch ($p) { 
    case 'home': 
     $current_home = 'current';
    break; 

    case 'users.online' || 'users.location' || 'users.featured' || 'users.browse' || 'users.search' || 'users.staff': 
     $current_users = 'current';
    break;

    case 'forum': 
     $current_forum = 'current';
    break; 
}

UPDATE - Test Results

I ran some speed test on 10,000 iterations,

Time1: 0.0199389457703 // If statements
Time2: 0.0389049446106 //switch statements
Time3: 0.106977939606 // Arrays

Answer 1

Version 1 is certainly easier on the eyes, clearer as to your intentions, and easier to add case-conditions to.

I've never tried the second version. In many languages, this wouldn't even compile because each case labels has to evaluate to a constant-expression.

Answer 2

I definitely prefer Version 1. Version 2 may require less lines of code, but it will be extremely hard to read once you have a lot of values in there like you're predicting.

(Honestly, I didn't even know Version 2 was legal until now. I've never seen it done that way before.)

Answer 3

If anyone else was ever to maintain your code, they would almost certainly do a double take on version 2 -- that's extremely non-standard.

I would stick with version 1. I'm of the school of though that case statements without a statement block of their own should have an explicit // fall through comment next to them to indicate it is indeed your intent to fall through, thereby removing any ambiguity of whether you were going to handle the cases differently and forgot or something.

Answer 4

Put those many values into an array and query the array, as the switch-case seems to hide the underlying semantics of what you're trying to achieve when a string variable is used as the condition, making it harder to read and understand, e.g.:

$current_home = null;
$current_users = null;
$current_forum = null;

$lotsOfStrings = array('users.online', 'users.location', 'users.featured', 'users.new');

if(empty($p)) {
    $current_home = 'current';
}

if(in_array($p,$lotsOfStrings)) {
    $current_users = 'current';
}

if(0 === strcmp('forum',$p)) {
    $current_forum = 'current';
}

Answer 5

I think version 1 is the way to go. It is a lot easier to read and understand.

Answer 6

Version 2 does not work!!

case 'users.online' || 'users.location' || ...

is exactly the same as:

case True:

and that case will be chosen for any value of $p, unless $p is the empty string.

|| Does not have any special meaning inside a case statement, you are not comparing $p to each of those strings, you are just checking to see if it's not False.

Answer 7

For any situation where you have an unknown string and you need to figure out which of a bunch of other strings it matches up to, the only solution which doesn't get slower as you add more items is to use an array, but have all the possible strings as keys. So your switch can be replaced with the following:

// used for $current_home = 'current';
$group1 = array(
        'home'  => True,
        );

// used for $current_users = 'current';
$group2 = array(
        'users.online'      => True,
        'users.location'    => True,
        'users.featured'    => True,
        'users.new'         => True,
        'users.browse'      => True,
        'users.search'      => True,
        'users.staff'       => True,
        );

// used for $current_forum = 'current';
$group3 = array(
        'forum'     => True,
        );

if(isset($group1[$p]))
    $current_home = 'current';
else if(isset($group2[$p]))
    $current_users = 'current';
else if(isset($group3[$p]))
    $current_forum = 'current';
else
    user_error("\$p is invalid", E_USER_ERROR);

This doesn't look as clean as a switch(), but it is the only fast solution which doesn't include writing a small library of functions and classes to keep it tidy. It is still very easy to add items to the arrays.