Use Type-Casting and Arrays in Place of Conditional Statements

I found a neat JavaScript tutorial about how to use type-casting and arrays instead of conditional statements.

In a nutshell it takes a basic conditional statement and does it in another way.

Same old boring conditional statement:

function doSomethingGreat(myVar) {
    switch(myVar) {
        case 'AmberTaylor':
            alert('Amber is smart as heck!');
            break;
        case 'Sharpdot':
            alert('Amber works for the best company in the world!');
            break;
    }
}

The new way:

function doSomethingGreat(myVar) {     //This Creates the function and passes in the condition to test against
    theEgoFunction = new Array();      //This turns the function into an Array
    theEgoFunction['AmberTaylor'] = theAmberTaylor;     // Selects a function for one choice to run
    theEgoFunction['Sharpdot'] = theSharpdot;      // Selects a function for the other choice to run
    theEgoFunction[myVar]();    //Now finally the fuction to execute
}

function theAmberTaylor() {     //The functions to run
    alert('Amber is smart as heck!');
}

function theSharpdot() {    //The other function to run
    alert('Amber works for the best company in the world!');
}

This code looks almost identical to Actionscript (except for the built-in JavaScript functions, and some nuances). I have been working more with Actionscript recently, but as a result you can’t help to learn JavaScript along the way.

Anyhow I didn’t write this tidbit originally,  however I found it neat enough to share.  It originally comes from the Webmonkey blog, check it out:

View it here: http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Free_Yourself_from_Conditions_in_JavaScript?oldid=31505