PHP Switch…Case

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the switch-case statement to test or evaluate an expression with different values in PHP.

## PHP If…Else Vs Switch…Case
The switch-case statement is an alternative to the if-elseif-else statement, which does almost the same thing. The switch-case statement tests a variable against a series of values until it finds a match, and then executes the block of code corresponding to that match.

```php
switch(n){
    case label1:
        // Code to be executed if n=label1
        break;
    case label2:
        // Code to be executed if n=label2
        break;
    ...
    default:
        // Code to be executed if n is different from all labels
}
```
Consider the following example, which display a different message for each day.

```php
<?php
$today = date("D");
switch($today){
    case "Mon":
        echo "Today is Monday. Clean your house.";
        break;
    case "Tue":
        echo "Today is Tuesday. Buy some food.";
        break;
    case "Wed":
        echo "Today is Wednesday. Visit a doctor.";
        break;
    case "Thu":
        echo "Today is Thursday. Repair your car.";
        break;
    case "Fri":
        echo "Today is Friday. Party tonight.";
        break;
    case "Sat":
        echo "Today is Saturday. Its movie time.";
        break;
    case "Sun":
        echo "Today is Sunday. Do some rest.";
        break;
    default:
        echo "No information available for that day.";
        break;
}
?>
```
The `switch-case` statement differs from the `if-elseif-else` statement in one important way. The `switch` statement executes line by line (i.e. statement by statement) and once PHP finds a `case` statement that evaluates to true, it's not only executes the code corresponding to that `case` statement, but also executes all the subsequent case statements till the end of the `switch` block automatically.

To prevent this add a `break` statement to the end of each `case` block. The `break` statement tells PHP to break out of the `switch-case` statement block once it executes the code associated with the first true case.