default as first option in switch statement?

Question

I\'ve tested this and it works fine, but it looks... weird... to me. Should I be concerned that this is nonstandard form which will be dropped in a future version of PHP, or

Answer 1

This can be really handy for flow control, particularly if you aren't breaking between cases.

For example:

$step = $_GET['skip_to_step'];
switch($step) {
    default:
    case 'step1':
        // do some stuff for step one
    case 'step2':
        // this follows on from step 1 or you can skip straight to it
}

You could add in an additional 'if', or a clever 'or' to make $step default to 'step1' before you start the switch but that's just extra code, reducing readability.