I think this is a simple question...

[Alexander Ross]

I have a variable ($x) that can have 50 different (string) values. I want
to check for 7 of those values and do something based on it ... as I see it
I have 2 options:

1) if (($x=="one") || ($x=="two") || ... || ($x=="seven")) ...

or

2) switch ($x){
case("one"):
case("two"):
...
}

It seems that there might be a more efficient way to do this?? Is there?

Alex

[matty]

Alexander Ross wrote:

I have a variable ($x) that can have 50 different (string) values. I want
to check for 7 of those values and do something based on it ... as I see
it I have 2 options:

1) if (($x=="one") || ($x=="two") || ... || ($x=="seven")) ...

or

2) switch ($x){
case("one"):
case("two"):
...
}

It seems that there might be a more efficient way to do this?? Is there?

Alex

You could do
if (pre_match('/^(one|two|three|four|five|six|seven)$/', $x))

but I think a lot of the time the switch method makes for more readable code.
It could be interesting to benchmark which is fastest, although I suspect there
isn't a lot of difference for most applications.

--
Matt Mitchell - AskMeNoQuestions
Dynamic Website Development and Marketing

[Ondrej Brablc]

Andy Hassall wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 19:05:38 GMT, "Alexander Ross" <al******@bleen.net> wrote:

....

It seems that there might be a more efficient way to do this?? Is there?

Put possible values in an array, use array_search, for example.

....

array_search is for associated arrays, you should use

if (in_array($x, array('one','two',...)))
{

}

Regards,
Ondrej