multiple charecter comparison inswitch statement

Question

1.00/5 (2 votes)

See more:

Hey guys,

I have a small doubt regarding the switch statement.
can we use the switch statement to compare more than one character, for example :

C#

switch(I do not know which data type to use)
{
       case 'hello':
                { cout << " you typed hello ";break;} 
}

Posted 28-Sep-13 19:31pm

A.U.K

Updated 28-Sep-13 21:57pm

André Kraak

v2

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-28T20:06:00

Solution 1

You can't.
The expression in a switch statement must be an integer, or a type which can be unambiguously converted to an integer. A string value cannot, because it can by longer than an integer can hold.

Posted 28-Sep-13 20:06pm

OriginalGriff

Comments

pasztorpisti 29-Sep-13 5:36am

But this is a multicharacter literal and not a string so it is basically an integer. Those are single quotes not double quotes.

EDIT: This can be done with short (max 4 byte long strings) but it would be a brutal antipattern that exploits compiler dependent behavior so the answer is indeed a big NO so +5 from me.

pasztorpisti · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-28T23:35:00

This is a multicharacter literal and it evaluates to a value of an integral type. The width of the integral type doesn't exceed that of the int type. I don't recommend using multicharacter literals if you are writing platform independent code. Why? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3960954/c-multicharacter-literal[^]
You can solve the same problem in a dozen other ways without using multicharacter literals.