C# tip— change switch statements to switch expressions

2 min readFeb 29, 2020

I am not a big fan of the switch statement.

For all the classic reasons:

it is difficult to maintain
it provides an opportunity for redundant code
switching on type is usually a code smell
it is so long

For this last reason, have a look at a simple switch statement that determines the week day name starting from the weekday number:

int dayNumber = 1;
String dayName = “”;
switch (dayNumber)
{
   case 1:
     dayName = “monday”;
     break;   case 2:
     dayName = “tuesday”;
     break;   case 3:
     dayName = “wednesday”;
     break;   case 4:
     dayName = “thursday”;
     break;   case 5:
     dayName = “friday”;
     break;   case 6:
     dayName = “saturday”;
     break;   case 7:
     dayName = “sunday”;
     break;   default: 
     break;
}

26 lines of code for such a simple thing!

How can you like something like this?

Is there a simpler and shorter way?

C# tip— change switch statements to switch expressions

Written by Alex Siminiuc