What is a good switch statement alternative?

Question

I have a string array containing strings of 3 letters each. Every 3 letters (every element) corresponds to a unique letter. I need to create a char array from the string array.<

Answer 1

If it's a mapping/lookup then usually a map/dictionary solves your problem. An example such structure in C#:

string[] inList = new[]{"bee", "kay", "kay", "eff" }; 
Dictionary mapping = new Dictionary 
   { 
       {"bee", 'b'},
       {"eff", 'f'},
       {"kay", 'k'},
   };

If you have such a mapping, then just look up the letters from the mapping, or convert the whole list of strings to an array of chars.

char[] chars = inList.Select(s => mapping[s]).ToArray();

Almost all languages supports data structures of this type, although not all support functional constructs like the last snippet. In that case you need a loop to build the out array.

EDIT: Saw you added the java tag. You can accomplish the same in java, your dictionary will then be a HashMap in java. So just take an aspirin and look at How can I initialise a static Map?