The switch statement

Branching on one value — and the fall-through trap.

Choosing among many values

A classic switch compares one value against several case labels:

switch (day) {
    case 1:
        name = "Mon";
        break;
    case 2:
        name = "Tue";
        break;
    default:
        name = "?";
}

The danger is fall-through: without break, execution continues into the next case. Forgetting a break is a real bug source — and occasionally a deliberate trick to share code between cases.

A classic switch works on int/short/byte/char, their wrappers, String, and enum types. The next lesson shows the modern switch expression, which fixes fall-through entirely.