The switch statement

Now, let's look at the switch statement. Here is what it looks like:

switch x {
    case 5:
      fmt.Println("5")
    case 6:
      fmt.Println("6")

default:

  fmt.Println("default case")
}

If you haven't noticed already, there is no break keyword. In Go, each case breaks automatically, and doesn't need to be told to do so.

Similar to if statements, you can do an initialization in your switch statement:

switch x := getX();x {
    case 5:
      fmt.Println("5")
    case 6:
      fmt.Println("6")

default:

  fmt.Println("default case")
}

In Go, a switch statement can act like a group of if else. This gives you the ability to write long if else chains with much nicer code:

switch{
case x == 5:
//do something
case x > 10:
// do something else
default:
//default case
}

In some scenarios, you want your switch cases not to break automatically, and instead fall through to the next case. For this, you can use the fallthrough keyword:

switch{
case x > 5:
//do something
fallthrough
case x > 10:
// do something else. If x is greater than 10, then the first case will execute first, then this case will follow
default:
//default case
}

Following conditional statements, let's take a look at loops.