On Feb 11, 2014, at 8:58, "Philipp A." <flying-sheep@web.de> wrote:

Only by repeating the word "case" instead. Compare your syntax:

    switch some_long_expr():

        if case(0): pass

        if case(1): pass

        if case(2): pass

... to what you can already write:

    case = some_long_expr()

    if case == 0: pass

    if case == 1: pass

    if case == 2: pass

So you haven't saved anything at all. You've added more syntax, more characters, and an extra level of indentation. (Note that in more realistic uses, with real statements being controlled, your syntax indents them all twice instead of once.)

If you really like using parens instead of equals, you can even do that:

    case = some_long_expr().__eq__

    if case(0): pass

    if case(1): pass

    if case(2): pass

Maybe you wanted your switch statement to automatically turn each if case into an elif. If so, then the existing alternative does require an extra "el" at the head of each line... But I think it's a lot clearer that at most one of these things will be executed that way.

Also, of course, the elif chain is more flexible. Consider how hard it would be to write this as a switch:

Or maybe you wanted it to turn the chain of if case statements into a dict lookup or something. If so, that's even more limited, and a lot more magical, for very little benefit.