Also be careful about declaring variables within a case unless you explicitly introduce a block statement. Honestly the potential for mistakes using a switch a

Also be careful about declaring variables within a case unless you explicitly introduce a block statement. Honestly the potential for mistakes using a switch are so numerous that I absolutely agree with you about reflexively avoiding them and preferring the use of an if statement. The optimization benefit no longer holds on modern compilers so all you're left with is fall through to simplify some really complex branching needs.