Conditional Statements

Conditional statements enable you to select at run time which block of code to execute. The simplest conditional statement is an if statement. For example:

% Generate a random number
a = randi(100, 1);

% If it is even, divide by 2
if rem(a, 2) == 0
    disp('a is even')
    b = a/2;
end

if statements can include alternate choices, using the optional keywords elseif or else. For example:

a = randi(100, 1);

if a < 30
    disp('small')
elseif a < 80
    disp('medium')
else
    disp('large')
end

Alternatively, when you want to test for equality against a set of known values, use a switch statement. For example:

[dayNum, dayString] = weekday(date, 'long', 'en_US');

switch dayString
   case 'Monday'
      disp('Start of the work week')
   case 'Tuesday'
      disp('Day 2')
   case 'Wednesday'
      disp('Day 3')
   case 'Thursday'
      disp('Day 4')
   case 'Friday'
      disp('Last day of the work week')
   otherwise
      disp('Weekend!')
end

For both if and switch, MATLAB^® executes the code corresponding to the first true condition, and then exits the code block. Each conditional statement requires the end keyword.

In general, when you have many possible discrete, known values, switch statements are easier to read than if statements. However, you cannot test for inequality between switch and case values. For example, you cannot implement this type of condition with a switch:

yourNumber = input('Enter a number: ');

if yourNumber < 0
    disp('Negative')
elseif yourNumber > 0
    disp('Positive')
else
    disp('Zero')
end