Adding clarity to switch statements: a humble PHP feature proposal

I don't see what this provides aside from redundant verbosity... How much a stumbling block is switch really?

"Oh you mean it just keeps going until you break? Okay, duly noted."

Fall through switch is quite useful, and if you really wanted an if-else, you'd use one, right?!

I like what Perl does: it separates cases by making them look like regular blocks:

    given($cat_macro){
        when(/OH HAI/){ 
            say "ceiling cat is watching you switch statements";
        }
        when(/OH NOES/){
            die "FAIL";
        }
        default { 
            say "<picture of a walrus with a bucket>";
        }
    }

Pretty easy to follow the control flow, even when they aren't oneliners.

I've got this great idea. Instead of :

next;

have:

// Continue through next case

The best part is that it's built into the language!!

The example implementation loses out on what actually putting it in the language would gain, though: causing an error when forgetting to include next; or break;.

Better solution would be getting rid of "break" and breaking by default like VB but no one would like that...

switch in C syntax is terrible implemented, VB done this one so much better. That's one of the reasons why switch is not that popular in C languages (people tend to do crazy if-then-else stuff) and so popular in VB, most devs tries to use select where possible.

switch($some_value) { case 1 : doSomething(); case 2 : doSomething(); break; case 3 : doSomethingElse(); break; default : doSomething(); doSomethingElse(); }

switch($some_value) { case 1 : doSomething(); case 2 : doSomething(); break; case 3 : doSomethingElse(); break; default : doSomething(); doSomethingElse(); }

Is there any reason why keeping things simple is not an option? The number of possible outcomes in a switch case can often be so many that falling through would just be the route to complicated and difficult to manage code.