note demerphq  Well, what I mean is that I dont see how in C the conditional is only evaluated once. I dont know enough about how C implements a case statement to say for sure But i dont see how a case statement could be implemented in such a way without adding a lot of code to the statement, which would potentially be far more expensive than converting it to a series of conditionals. For instance something like this <code> switch (val) { case 1 : handle_case1; break; case 2 : handle_case2; break; case 5 : handle_case5; case 10: handle_case10; default: handle_default; } </code> I would guess would get converted to something like <code> if (val == 1) { handle_case1; } elsif (val == 2) { handle_case2; } else { if (val == 5) { goto CASE5; } elsif (val == 10) { goto CASE10; } else { goto DEFAULT; } CASE5: handle_case5; CASE10: handle_case10; DEFAULT: handle_default; } </code> Or something like it. I just dont see how it could be handled otherwise. Perhaps the fact that it only operates on ints means that there is a neater optimisation. But if you extend switch to handle strings as it does in pascal then I think the situation becomes even more difficult. Thanks to the CB for clarifying that switch only handles ints. That issue may make my ruminations on this invalid. I dont know. Id be interested to hear from someone that does. As I said, this issue confuses me. :-) <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-108447"> --- demerphq <ol> First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi </ol> </div></div>  301355 301418