Are you not familiar with the words ‘Switch’ and ‘Case’ while learning another programming language like Java or C++? You must be not! Because Switch and case are two very useful conditional statements that hover around every other programming language, Ruby is built differently! So In this article related to case versus switch in ruby, we will be discussing the ‘Case’ statements, and the case versus switch in ruby will follow it.
What is the Case Statement
Conditional statements are a significant player in the programming language. The if and if-else statements are the market leaders in this category as their syntax is widely used, but we will be discussing the case statement here as it offers certain bonus things over the if-else statements in ruby.
The case is a multiway conditional statement. The ‘Case’ statement in ruby comes with the when and the else statements, and it can follow two methods to be used. Let us see an example of the first form of the case statement in the article related to case versus switch in ruby.
Example (1st form)
name = case value
when y == 10 then "ten"
when y == 20 then "twenty"
when y == 30 then "thirty"
when y == 40 then "fourty"
else "many" end
end
You can also try this code with Online Ruby Compiler
The above code illustrates an example of the case in ruby, the when expression is executed every time in the order until it is true. If any ‘when’ expression is true, the case statement will evaluate the code written after the ‘then’ expression.
If you are a keen observer, you may have discovered that this form of the case in ruby follows the same syntax as the if and the if-else statement.
But the second and the most helpful form of the case in ruby follows a different syntax. Let us see how.
Example (2nd form)
Let us see the following code, which illustrates the most used form of the case in ruby in the article related to case versus switch in ruby.
name = case x
when 1 then “one”
when 2 then "two"
when 3 then "three"
else "many"
End
You can also try this code with Online Ruby Compiler
In the above example of the case in ruby, we have used a variable ‘x’, which gets compared to the values in the order of writing this code. Otherwise, in the first form of syntax for the case in ruby, we had to use the statement when ‘variable name’ == ‘value’ every time we needed to use the case statement.
It is evident that the second form of the case statement is much easier to use in ruby.
Let us now move to how a case statement in ruby is different from a switch statement in other programming languages.
The case versus switch in ruby
As discussed earlier, the switch statement is used in other programming languages, including the case keyword. In this section, we will discuss some of the points of difference between cases versus switch in ruby.
Points of difference
The switch is the statement's name in Java and comparable languages, and case and default are the names of its clauses. Whereas when and else are used as clause names in Ruby, and the case is the sentence's name.
In other languages, switch statements only move control to the beginning of the relevant case. Control then moves on and may "fall through" to additional cases up until the end of the switch statement or until it comes across a break or return statement. Multiple case clauses may refer to the same block of code thanks to this fall-through behaviour. The ability to connect several comma-separated expressions with each ‘when’ clause in Ruby accomplishes the same goal. Fall-through is never permitted under Ruby's case statement.
The expressions associated with each case label in Java and most compiled languages with C-like syntax must be compile-time constants rather than free-form runtime expressions. Because of this, the compiler frequently implements the switch statement using a lightning-fast lookup table. Ruby's case statement does not have this restriction, and its speed is the same as using an if statement with numerous elseif clauses. These were some points of difference of the case versus switch in ruby.I hope to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of the case in ruby over the switch statement in other programming languages.
Let us now discuss the frequently asked questions related to the topic.
Frequently asked questions
What are conditional statements?
Conditional statements are those statements in which a hypothesis is followed by a command. For example, if x = 5, then print Five!.
Name some of the conditional statements ruby supports?
Ruby supports if, if-else, unless, case statements. These all have their own significance according to the need of the programmer.
Who among the if-else and case statement is faster?
There is no hard and fast rule to determine this, it totally depends on the situation. For example, the case statement is faster when handling many conditions.
What is ‘===’ in Ruby?
When a case statement's “when” clause contains an equality test, Ruby's === operator is utilised to check for equality.
What are the clauses which the case statement includes?
Ruby’s case statement includes the “when”, “then” and “else” clauses.
Conclusion
In this article, we have extensively discussed the case in ruby and the case versus switch in ruby. We saw two examples related to the case statement in ruby, supported by a piece of code written in Ruby language. We also explained the code in order to make you crystal clear about the topic, and I hope it helped you!