note 61260 deleted from language.control-structures by bjori

Note Submitter: Andrzej dot Martynowicz at gmail dot com ---- Have you ever encountered the situation when wanted to break processing the if statement before final '}' bracket? Usually you need to use nested if statemets, which can be sometimes very confusing: <? if( $initial_condition ) { if( $condition_1 ) { // do something that leeds to next condition if( $condition_2 ) { // and even more confusing situation if( $condition_3 && $condition_4 ) { // code that satisfies $condition_3 as well as $condition_4 } elseif( $condition_4 ) { // code that satisfies $condition_4 but not $condition_3 } } } } ?> The trick, that I came up with, is to put the "switch" statement after the "if" condition (it will be executed always when $initial_condition of the "if" gives positive result). Than one can open the block of code for this "switch" statement as if it was a block for "if". The "switch" statement should be written with only one "case" - "default" case, so that code within "switch" will be executed independently of the condition of the "switch" (so one can put there just anything.. i usually use the $fake variable as shown below). Now because the block of code belongs to "switch" (not to "if"), can be broken by "break" whenever programmer want to (and in fact it will break processing of the "if" statement). See below how this works: <? $fake = ''; if( $initial_condition ) switch( $fake ) { default: // switch statement trick if(! $condition_1 ) break; // do something if(! $condition_2 ) break; // code is no more confusing // following statements looks good now if( $condition_3 && $condition_4 ) { // code that satisfies $condtion_3 as well as $condition_4 } elseif( $condition_4 ) { // code that satisfies $condtion_4 but not $condition_3 } // hovever it could be rewriten in even more readable way if(! $condition_4 ) break; if( $condition_3 ) { // code that satisfies $condition_3 as well as $condition_4 } else { // code that satisfies $condition_4 but not $condition_3 } } ?>