Breaks in C++ Switch Statement

1. the switch Statement With break in C++
2. the switch Statement Without break in C++

The break statement in C and C++ is used to stop a loop from iterating if the required condition is met within the code blocks of the switch statement.

If the break statement is not used, the program will continue to execute until the end of the switch statement is reached.

First, we must understand how a switch statement works.

At the beginning of the switch statement, we have to provide an expression, then the program will go through each case in the switch statement, and if it finds the case that matches the expression that we provided, it will execute that case.

If the above process cannot match the expression, the program will jump out of the switch statement and execute the default statement.

the switch Statement With break in C++

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
  int rating = 2;
  switch (rating) {
    case 1:
      cout << "Rated as 1. ";
      break;

    case 2:
      cout << "Rated as 2. ";
      break;

    case 3:
      cout << "Rated as 3. ";
      break;

    case 4:
      cout << "Rated as 4. ";
      break;

    case 5:
      cout << "Rated as 5. ";
      break;
  }
  return 0;
}

The expression here is rating = 2. What the program does here is that it goes through each case one by one and checks for a potential match for the expression provided to stop executing the loop any further and terminates it, giving us the output below.

Rated as 2.

the switch Statement Without break in C++

Let’s run the same code again, but this time by removing the break statements after each case.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
  int rating = 2;
  switch (rating) {
    case 1:
      cout << "Rated as 1. ";

    case 2:
      cout << "Rated as 2. ";

    case 3:
      cout << "Rated as 3. ";

    case 4:
      cout << "Rated as 4. ";

    case 5:
      cout << "Rated as 5. ";
  }

  return 0;
}

Output:

Rated as 2. Rated as 3. Rated as 4. Rated as 5.

You can see that without the break statement, the program prints the value of each case even after the requirement is fulfilled.

The break statement is used for situations in which the number of times a loop should iterate is unknown or when the loop meets a certain predefined condition.

The switch statement body will not get executed when there is no default statement and no case match in the statement body. There can only be one default statement anywhere inside the switch statement body.

Finally, the break statement is also used with doing, for, and while loops. In those situations, the break statement forces the program to exit the loop when the particular criteria are met.