break and switch appears to execute all case statements

Question

In the latest stable release of Java and Eclipse (Kempler), entering the following code and executing it, assuming the package and class names exist:

package         


        

Answer 1

The reason why switch works as it does is that this:

switch(p){  
        case (1):
            x--;
        case (2):
            x = 2;
        case (3):
            x = 3;
        default:
            x++;
    }

is really just syntactic sugar for this (basically):

if (p == 1)
    goto .L1;
else if (p == 2)
    goto .L2;
else if (p == 3)
    goto .L3;
else
    goto .L4;

.L1:
    x--;
.L2:
    x = 2;
.L3:
    x = 3;
.L4:
    x++;

Java doesn't have a goto statement, but C does, and that's where it comes from. So if p is 2, it jumps to .L2 and executes all the statements following that label.