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

Answer 1

I'm not absolutely opposed to switch statements, but in the case you present, I'd have at least eliminated the duplication of assigning the DiscountType; I might have instead written a function that returns a DiscountType given a string. That function could have simply had the return statements for each case, eliminating the need for a break. I find the need for breaks between switch cases very treacherous.

private MyType DoSomething(IDataRecord reader)
{
    var p = new MyType
                {
                   Id = (int)reader[idIndex],
                   Name = (string)reader[nameIndex]
                }

    p.DiscountType = FindDiscountType(reader[discountTypeIndex]);

    return p;
}

private DiscountType FindDiscountType (string key) {
    switch ((string) reader[discountTypeIndex])
    {
        case "A":
            return DiscountType.Discountable;
        case "B":
            return DiscountType.Loss;
        case "O":
            return DiscountType.Other;
    }
    // handle the default case as appropriate
}

Pretty soon, I'd have noticed that FindDiscountType() really belongs to the DiscountType class and moved the function.