C++

Forum

 
Is there an alternative to this switch?

Apr 25, 2013 at 6:19pm
BrianDehn (38)
Is there an alternative to this switch statement? The switch statement works but I don't like the way it looks in the code. It just seems like there should be a shortcut that involves an if loop and an array.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
 
  {
	char dayNameCh[2]; // an array to hold the first 2 chars of the day name entered by the user
	string ignore; // a variable to handle the rest of the day name that is not used

	cout << "Enter the day you would like to set:   ";

			for (int index = 0; index < 2; index++) // get the first 2 chars in the users input
				{                                   // and assigns them to the array
				cin >> dayNameCh[index];
				}
			 getline (cin,ignore); // ignore the rest of the input
	
	switch (dayNameCh[0]) //reads the array and determins what weekday to set day to. 
		{
		case 'S':
		case 's':
			if (dayNameCh[1]== 'u' || dayNameCh[1] == 'U')
			{
				day = "Sunday";
				dayNumber = 1;
			}
			else 
			{
				day = "Saturday";
				dayNumber = 7;
			}
			break;

		case 'T':
		case 't':
			if (dayNameCh[1]== 'u' || dayNameCh[1] == 'U')
			{
				day = "Tuesday";
				dayNumber = 3;
			}
			else 
			{
				day = "Thursday";
				dayNumber = 5;
			}
			break;

		case 'M':
		case 'm':
			{
				day = "Monday";
				dayNumber = 2;
			}
			break;

		case 'W':
		case 'w':
			{
				day = "Wedensday";
				dayNumber = 4;
			}
			break;

		case 'F':
		case 'f':
			{
				day = "Friday";
				dayNumber = 6;
			}
				break;
		default:
			cout << "Your entry could not be mached to a weekday. Please try again." << endl; // ERROR handling
			promptUser();
		}
}


possibly something using an array of strings with the weekdays in it?

1
2
 
string dayName[] = {"Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wedensday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"};
Apr 25, 2013 at 6:26pm
giblit (3750)
In general switch statements are shorter ans easier to read and array would be useless that's an extra line since each day only used once
Apr 25, 2013 at 6:36pm
keskiverto (10425)
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cctype/tolower/

You could use std::map, where key is two lowercase letters and value is a pair of dayName and dayNumber.
Apr 25, 2013 at 6:51pm
giblit (3750)
Well if that's what he is doing.. you could do something like.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
 
    string day, array[7] = {"Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"};
    std::cout << "Please enter a day: " << std::flush;
    getline(cin, day);
    day[0] = toupper(day[0]);
    for(unsigned int i = 1; i<day.size(); i++) day[i] = tolower(day[i]);
    for(unsigned int i = 0; i<7; i++) if(day == array[i])
        std::cout << "The entered day was: " << day << " which is day " << i+1 << " of the week." << std::endl;

Apr 25, 2013 at 7:27pm
BrianDehn (38)
Oh. Very nice. That is what I was looking for. I just couldn't visualize it without seeing it. Thank you all so much :]
Topic archived. No new replies allowed.