A Basic Case Statement

The syntax for case statements (or switch statements) is a little different for each language. I often confuse the Ruby and JavaScript syntax or wonder if I need to be using a colon anywhere.

Here is a demonstration of how to write a basic case statement in Ruby.

case ['taco', 'burrito', 'pizza', nil].sample
when 'taco'
  puts 'Taco, eh. Carne asada or al pastor?'
when 'burrito'
  puts 'Burrito, eh. Want it smothered?'
when 'pizza'
  puts 'Pizza, eh. Cheese or pepperoni?'
else
  puts 'What do you want to eat?'
end

This next example demonstrates two things. First, you can make things terser with the then syntax. Second, the case statement does an implicit return of whatever the last value is from the evaluated case. So it can be used as part of a variable assignment.

question =
  case ['taco', 'burrito', 'pizza', nil].sample
  when 'taco' then 'Taco, eh. Carne asada or al pastor?'
  when 'burrito' then 'Burrito, eh. Want it smothered?'
  when 'pizza' then 'Pizza, eh. Cheese or pepperoni?'
  else 'What do you want to eat?'
  end

puts question