Although, for many situations, a series of nested IF statements can perform multiway tests, a built-in multiple-branch decision statement, like SWITCH, is a more efficient approach. When a match is found, then the statement sequence associated with that match is executed:
         switch (expression)
         {
         case constant1:
         statement sequence
         break;
         case constant2:
         statement sequence
         break;
         case constant3:
         statement sequence
         break;
         .
         .
         .
         default
         statement sequence
         }
where,
         default statement -- Is performed if no matches are found. This default is optional.
In this program, the SWITCH expression must evaluate to either a character or an integer value. The expression, which controls the switch, is simply a variable. When a match is found, then the statements associated with that case are executed until its break is encountered.

Note that the SWITCH statement in C++ follows:
         i) Comparison between SWITCH and IF: SWITCH can only test for equality, while the IF conditional expression can be of any type.
         ii) A SWITCH statement is normally more efficient than nested IFs.
         iii) The entire SWITCH statement does define a block, even though the statement sequences associated with each case are not blocks.

Note that, in DM, there is no switch statement. For instance, Table 1133 shows that a working DM script here is a replacement of switch statement in C++. This script creates a simple "help" system that describes the meaning of the for, if, and switch statements. It first displays the help topics and then waits for the user to enter a choice.

Table 1133. Comparison between DM and C++ codes with SWITCH statement.