Perl/Basics/Boolean Logic/Statements/Switch

To use perl's switch() routine you must have use Switch; before your switch() statement. A switch statement allows a programmer to avoid long chains of "elsif" statements. It condenses the amount of required lines of code. Perl's switch statement is very similar to the switch() statement in C and C++, though the syntax is a little different. A perl switch() statement may contain case and else clauses. Perl switch cases can also be used to determine if a value is in a list, an array element, hash key, or matches a regular expression or string. In this example, suppose $option was a numeric value for an integer based menu with 3 options.

use Switch; switch(int($option)) { case 1 { # Essentially the same as if ($option == 1) print "You picked option 1!\n"; } case 2 { # Essentially the same as elsif ($option == 2) print "You picked option 2!\n"; } case 3 { # Essentially the same as elsif ($option == 3) print "You picked option 3!\n"; } else { print "invalid menu option!\n"; } }

For more information, see perldoc switch, or: here.