How would you make this switch statement as fast as possible?

Question

2009-12-04 UPDATE: For profiling results on a number of the suggestions posted here, see below!

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The Question

Consider the following very

Answer 1

A couple of random thoughts, that may not all be applicable together:

Switch on the first character in the string, rather than the string itself, and do a sub-switch for strings which can contain more than one letter?

A hashtable would certainly guarantee O(1) retrieval, though it might not be faster for smaller numbers of comparisons.

Don't use strings, use enums or something like a flyweight instead. Using strings in this case seems a bit fragile anyway...

And if you really need it to be as fast as possible, why aren't you writing it in assembly? :)