I guess the reminder that C's switch syntax is bizarre and flexible is amusing, but this is still really wrong-headed. Friends don't let friends write code like

I guess the reminder that C's switch syntax is bizarre and flexible is amusing, but this is still really wrong-headed. Friends don't let friends write code like this! We're told we have "process_command_msg" and "process_status_msg" functions. Each of those functions is already doing a switch or if/else to determine the exact message type. If you care about the cost of those lookups, the correct thing to do is have a single switch statement that handles all the messages at once. If you don't care enough about the cost of lookups to split up those functions, you should stick with the obvious if/else test. Another thing you could do to improve the design is to have a "get_message_type" function returning a "COMMAND_TYPE" or "STATUS_TYPE" enum, then switch on that. That can be made efficient if you really care about execution cost (for example, check a single bit, and inline it so the switch can be optimized). Abusing the switch statement not only gives you unreadable and bug-prone code, it simply isn't any better than a sensible approach.