PHP endswitch; - Is this normally practiced?

Question

I was reading some switch statements and noticed one using endswitch;. Why or why not should one use this? Is it even necessary?

Answer 1

It is used if you use the alternative syntax for control structures.

Thus you could either choose

switch ($var) {
    case 1:
        echo "Hello!\n";
        break;
    case 2:
        echo "Goodbye!\n";
        break;
    default:
        echo "I only understand 1 and 2.\n";
}

or

switch ($var):
    case 1:
        echo "Hello!\n";
        break;
    case 2:
        echo "Goodbye!\n";
        break;
    default:
        echo "I only understand 1 and 2.\n";
endswitch;

They are functionally identical, and merely provided as syntactic sugar.

Answer 2

The usual systax for switch statements in c-style languages is like this:

switch($foo) {
    case 1:  foobar();
             break;
    case 2:  something();
             break;
    case 3:  whatever();
             break;
    default: anything();
}

Never saw "endswitch" in actual production code.

I'd recommend sticking to the accepted coding standards to keep your code readable and maintainable.

Answer 3

I've never used the switch variant, but for if statements or for statements it can be handy in templates.

But It's mostly a matter of taste.

Answer 4

The alternative syntax is very nice in template files.