ICYMI C# 8 New Features: Nested Switch Expressions

15 February 2021 (0)

This is part 4 in a series of articles.

In this series we’ve already covered switch expressions and one little-known feature is the ability to nest switch expressions.

Suppose we have the following 3 classes:

class SavingsAccount
{
    public decimal Balance { get; set; }
}

class HomeLoanAccount
{
    public int MonthsRemaining { get; set; }
}

class ChequingAccount
{
    public decimal NumberOfTimesOverdrawn { get; set; }
    public int NumberOfAccountHolders { get; set; }
}

(Notice that none of the preceding classes are linked by inheritance.)

Suppose we wanted to run a gift card promotional mailing depending on what accounts customers had. We can use pattern matching on the type of object in a switch expression:

decimal CalculatePromotionalGiftCardValue(object account) => account switch
{
    SavingsAccount sa when (sa.Balance > 10_000) => 100,
    SavingsAccount _ => 0, // all other savings accounts

    HomeLoanAccount hla when (hla.MonthsRemaining < 12) => 20,
    HomeLoanAccount _ => 0, // all other home loan accounts

    ChequingAccount ca when (ca.NumberOfTimesOverdrawn == 0 && ca.NumberOfAccountHolders == 1) => 20,
    ChequingAccount ca when (ca.NumberOfTimesOverdrawn == 0 && ca.NumberOfAccountHolders == 2) => 40,
    ChequingAccount ca when (ca.NumberOfTimesOverdrawn == 0 && ca.NumberOfAccountHolders == 3) => 50,
    ChequingAccount _ => 0, // all other chequing accounts

    { } => throw new ArgumentException("Unknown account type", paramName: nameof(account)), // all other non-null object types
    null => throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(account))
};

Notice in the preceding expression-bodied method containing a switch expression (that’s a mouthful!), that there is a bit of repetition in the ChequingAccount section with the ca.NumberOfTimesOverdrawn == 0 code being repeated. We can replace this section with a nested switch expression:

decimal CalculatePromotionalGiftCardValueNested(object account) => account switch
{
    SavingsAccount sa when (sa.Balance > 10_000) => 100,
    SavingsAccount _ => 0,

    HomeLoanAccount hla when (hla.MonthsRemaining < 12) => 20,
    HomeLoanAccount _ => 0,

    ChequingAccount ca when (ca.NumberOfTimesOverdrawn == 0) => ca.NumberOfAccountHolders switch
    {
        1 => 20,
        2 => 40,
        3 => 50,
        _ => 0
    },
    ChequingAccount _ => 0,

    { } => throw new ArgumentException("Unknown account type", paramName: nameof(account)),
    null => throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(account))
};

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