Good day, Actually, using the "break" statement is the accepted, proper way to break out of a switch statement, just as it is in other programming languages.
And yes, the "break" statement can be used to terminate other loops, such as "while" and "for", just like in other languages. Using it there is not considered bad programming practice either, although in the case of the while statement you should try to utilize the loop condition if possible. FYI, the command to break to the next iteration of a loop is "continue". The PHP site has very good documentation on the usage and appropriateness for "switch", "break" and "continue". I would highly recommend you take a look, if you have not already. ============================ Darren Gamble Planner, Regional Services Shaw Cablesystems GP 630 - 3rd Avenue SW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2P 4L4 (403) 781-4948 -----Original Message----- From: Erik Price [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 2:11 PM To: PHP Subject: [PHP] break statement usage Hello, all I have a quick question about using the "break" statement from within a switch() statement. After accepting user input from a form, I want to run this input through some error checking via PHP code (not Javascript error checking). So the first thing is the code puts the input through to a couple of error functions (this is all inside of a switch statement that is determined by a radio button on the previous page). If the error functions show the input as invalid, I echo back a specific error-message telling the user which field needs to be fixed, and then "break" to end the case statement. That way the input never comes near the database functions (mysql_query()) if it is invalid input. Is this a poor way to code -- using the "break" as a shortcut to jump out of the switch statement? Are there other ways that "break" can be used -- such as from loops? I've been learning Python on the side, and in that language, the "break" statement is used often, sometimes in a loop like while 1 do some code if condition is true break This is basically an infinite loop until the condition is true -- though I've never seen a WHILE loop in PHP that is formed this way (using a 1 to make it happen infinitely until a condition is met and then BREAKing out of the loop). Usually, at least from what I've seen, PHP WHILE loops are constructed so that they terminate when a condition is met specified immediately after the WHILE, as in: while (x < $number_of_iterations) { do some code } So what I'm wondering is, Is it bad coding practice to make heavy use of "break" statements in switch() flow control? Thank you for your opinions, Erik -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]