Switch statement for greater-than/less-than

Question

so I want to use a switch statement like this:

switch (scrollLeft) {
  case (<1000):
   //do stuff
   break;
  case (>1000 && <2000):
   //do stuff
   break;
}

Now I know that either of those statements (<1000) or (>1000 && <2000) won't work (for different reasons, obviously). What I'm asking is the most efficient way to do just that. I hate using 30 if statements, so I'd rather use the switch syntax. Is there anything that I can do?

Answer 1

When I looked at the solutions in the other answers I saw some things that I know are bad for performance. I was going to put them in a comment but I thought it was better to benchmark it and share the results. You can test it yourself. Below are my results (ymmv) normalized after the fastest operation in each browser (multiply the 1.0 time with the normalized value to get the absolute time in ms).

                    Chrome  Firefox Opera   MSIE    Safari  Node
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1.0 time               37ms    73ms    68ms   184ms    73ms    21ms
if-immediate            1.0     1.0     1.0     2.6     1.0     1.0
if-indirect             1.2     1.8     3.3     3.8     2.6     1.0
switch-immediate        2.0     1.1     2.0     1.0     2.8     1.3
switch-range           38.1    10.6     2.6     7.3    20.9    10.4
switch-range2          31.9     8.3     2.0     4.5     9.5     6.9
switch-indirect-array  35.2     9.6     4.2     5.5    10.7     8.6
array-linear-switch     3.6     4.1     4.5    10.0     4.7     2.7
array-binary-switch     7.8     6.7     9.5    16.0    15.0     4.9

Test where performed on Windows 7 32bit with the folowing versions: Chrome 21.0.1180.89m, Firefox 15.0, Opera 12.02, MSIE 9.0.8112, Safari 5.1.7. Node was run on a Linux 64bit box because the timer resolution on Node.js for Windows was 10ms instead of 1ms.

if-immediate

This is the fastest in all tested environments, except in ... drumroll MSIE! (surprise, surprise). This is the recommended way to implement it.

if (val < 1000) { /*do something */ } else
if (val < 2000) { /*do something */ } else
...
if (val < 30000) { /*do something */ } else

if-indirect

This is a variant of switch-indirect-array but with if-statements instead and performs much faster than switch-indirect-array in almost all tested environments.

values=[
   1000,  2000, ... 30000
];
if (val < values[0]) { /* do something */ } else
if (val < values[1]) { /* do something */ } else
...
if (val < values[29]) { /* do something */ } else

switch-immediate

This is pretty fast in all tested environments, and actually the fastest in MSIE. It works when you can do a calculation to get an index.

switch (Math.floor(val/1000)) {
  case 0: /* do something */ break;
  case 1: /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case 29: /* do something */ break;
}

switch-range

This is about 6 to 40 times slower than the fastest in all tested environments except for Opera where it takes about one and a half times as long. It is slow because the engine has to compare the value twice for each case. Surprisingly it takes Chrome almost 40 times longer to complete this compared to the fastest operation in Chrome, while MSIE only takes 6 times as long. But the actual time difference was only 74ms in favor to MSIE at 1337ms(!).

switch (true) {
  case (0 <= val &&  val < 1000): /* do something */ break;
  case (1000 <= val &&  val < 2000): /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case (29000 <= val &&  val < 30000): /* do something */ break;
}

switch-range2

This is a variant of switch-range but with only one compare per case and therefore faster, but still very slow except in Opera. The order of the case statement is important since the engine will test each case in source code order ECMAScript262:5 12.11

switch (true) {
  case (val < 1000): /* do something */ break;
  case (val < 2000): /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case (val < 30000): /* do something */ break;
}

switch-indirect-array

In this variant the ranges is stored in an array. This is slow in all tested environments and very slow in Chrome.

values=[1000,  2000 ... 29000, 30000];

switch(true) {
  case (val < values[0]): /* do something */ break;
  case (val < values[1]): /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case (val < values[29]): /* do something */ break;
}

array-linear-search

This is a combination of a linear search of values in an array, and the switch statement with fixed values. The reason one might want to use this is when the values isn't known until runtime. It is slow in every tested environment, and takes almost 10 times as long in MSIE.

values=[1000,  2000 ... 29000, 30000];

for (sidx=0, slen=values.length; sidx < slen; ++sidx) {
  if (val < values[sidx]) break;
}

switch (sidx) {
  case 0: /* do something */ break;
  case 1: /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case 29: /* do something */ break;
}

array-binary-switch

This is a variant of array-linear-switch but with a binary search. Unfortunately it is slower than the linear search. I don't know if it is my implementation or if the linear search is more optimized. It could also be that the keyspace is to small.

values=[0, 1000,  2000 ... 29000, 30000];

while(range) {
  range = Math.floor( (smax - smin) / 2 );
  sidx = smin + range;
  if ( val < values[sidx] ) { smax = sidx; } else { smin = sidx; }
}

switch (sidx) {
  case 0: /* do something */ break;
  ...
  case 29: /* do something */ break;
}

Conclusion

If performance is important, use if-statements or switch with immediate values.