The switch statement is also available in the widely used C
programming language. There are, however, some differences
between the statement in Octave and C
     
switch statement of the C language.
               switch (foo)
            case (1) -2
            ...
     would produce surprising results, as would
          switch (foo)
            case (1)
            case (2)
              doit ();
            ...
     particularly for C programmers. If doit() should be executed if
foo is either 1 or 2, the above code should be
written with a cell array like this
     
          switch (foo)
            case { 1, 2 }
              doit ();
            ...