Proposal 2009 Strings In Switch

Proposal: Strings in Switch

Summary

Add the ability to switch on string values analogous to the existing ability to switch on values of the primitive types.

Relevant Mail Discussion Threads

• Original proposal: http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/coin-dev/2009-February/000001.html

Discussion

There were no replies to the original proposal on the PC mailing list.

There were some comments, but not significant discussion, when Joe posted a blog entry detailing the proposal. Of the comments, I would highlight the following

• support case-insensitive switch: another commenter pointed out this is would require Locale-specific matching, which would complicate the proposal and implementation
• null handling: several commenters requested that a special "case null" be supported. In the current proposal, switching on a null value will cause a NullPointerException to be thrown.