Seems like the 'classic' C way to go about it would be to use scanf/printf-style format strings: int mode = select("<%i | >%i", channel1, 42, channel2, &i)

Seems like the 'classic' C way to go about it would be to use scanf/printf-style format strings: int mode = select("<%i | >%i", channel1, 42, channel2, &i); switch(mode) { case 0: foo(); break; case 1: bar(i); break; }