Methods of simplifying ugly nested if-else trees in C#

Question

Sometimes I\'m writing ugly if-else statements in C# 3.5; I\'m aware of some different approaches to simplifying that with table-driven development, class hierarchy, anonimous m

Answer 1

I was told years ago by an instructor that 3 is a magic number. And as he applied it it-else statements he suggested that if I needed more that 3 if's then I should probably use a case statement instead.

   switch (testValue)
   {
      case = 1:
         // do something
         break;
      case = 2:
         // do something else
         break;
      case = 3:
         // do something more
         break;
      case = 4
         // do what?
         break;
      default:
         throw new Exception("I didn't do anything");
   }

If you're nesting if statements more than 3 deep then you should probably take that as a sign that there is a better way. Probably like Avirdlg suggested, separating the nested if statements into 1 or more methods. If you feel you are absolutely stuck with multiple if-else statements then I would wrap all the if-else statements into a single method so it didn't ugly up other code.