Performance difference of if else vs switch statement in Java

Question

In terms of performance of the application, which among if/else and switch statement will give better results?

Answer 1

The thing you are worried about is micro-optimization and premature optimization.

Rather than worrying about this, I would suggest taking the readability and maintainability of the code more into consideration.

If there are more than two if/else blocks glued together or its size is unpredictable, then go for a switch statement.

As an alternate solution, you can also use Polymorphism.

For that, first create some interface:

public interface Test { void execute(String input); }

And get hold of all implementations in some Map. You can do this either statically or dynamically:

Map<String, Test> test= new HashMap<String, Test>();

Finally, replace the if/else or switch by something like this (leaving trivial checks like null pointers aside):

test.get(name).execute(input);

It might be micro slower than if/else or switch, but the code is at least far better maintainable.