Java String Switch Case Example

Java 7 started support for using String in switch case. In earlier versions, if you have to write conditional logic based on a string, you had to use if-else blocks.

Table of Contents

Java String Switch Case Example

Let’s look at some examples of using string in switch case statements.

package net.javastring.strings;

import java.util.Scanner;

public class JavaStringSwitchCase {

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		System.out.print("Please enter any programming language:\n");

		Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);

		String input = scanner.next();
		
		scanner.close();

		switch (input) {
		case "java":
			System.out.println("Java Current Version is 12.");
			break;
		case "python":
			System.out.println("Python Current Version is 3.7");
			break;
		case "rust":
			System.out.println("Rust Current Version is 1.34.1");
			break;
		default:
			System.out.println("We don't have information about this programming language");
		}
	}

}

Output:

Java String Switch Case vs if-else

Let’s have a look at the alternate implementation of above code using if-else block.

if ("java".equals(input))
	System.out.println("Java Current Version is 12.");
else if ("python".equals(input))
	System.out.println("Python Current Version is 3.7");
else if ("rust".equals(input))
	System.out.println("Rust Current Version is 1.34.1");
else
	System.out.println("We don't have information about this programming language");

Important Points for String in Switch Case

Java switch case with string is more readable than the multiple if-else if-else blocks.
The switch case matching is case sensitive, so “java” will not match for input string “Java”.
If the input string is null, switch-case will throw NullPointerException. So have a null check in place before writing the switch-case code.
The bytecode generated by switch-case is more efficient than the if-else blocks. You can check this in the reference article below.
You can convert the input string and all the case values to either uppercase or lowercase for case insensitive match.

References:

Java SE Documentation for String in Switch Case