When should one try to eliminate a switch statement? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Yes, this looks like a correct usage of switch statement.

However, I have another question for you.

Why haven't you included the default label? Throwing an Exception in the default label will make sure that the program will fail properly when you add a new discountTypeIndex and forget to modify the code.

Also, if you wanted to map a string value to an Enum, you can use Attributes and reflection.

Something like:

public enum DiscountType
{
    None,

    [Description("A")]
    Discountable,

    [Description("B")]
    Loss,

    [Description("O")]
    Other
}

public GetDiscountType(string discountTypeIndex)
{
    foreach(DiscountType type in Enum.GetValues(typeof(DiscountType))
    {
        //Implementing GetDescription should be easy. Search on Google.
        if(string.compare(discountTypeIndex, GetDescription(type))==0)
            return type;
    }

    throw new ArgumentException("DiscountTypeIndex " + discountTypeIndex + " is not valid.");
}