Is the conditional operator slow?

Question

I was looking at some code with a huge switch statement and an if-else statement on each case and instantly felt the urge to optimize. As a good developer always should do I

Answer 1

I would expect #1 and #2 to be the same. The optimizer should result in the same code. The dictionary in #3 would expected to be slow, unless it is optimized somehow to not actual use a hash.

When coding real-time systems, we always used a look-up table--a simple array--to translate as given in your example. It's the fastest when the range of input is fairly small.