Before java 1.7 the switch statement would only handled byte, char, short and int or primitive data types... but now... (as of java 7) it handles strings!

This is a great improvement since strings are used a lot in the programming world. Why did't java support it before? Because strings are not exactly primitive data types. Strings are arrays of characters... characters (char) are primitive data types.

  switch(<variable>){   case <value>:    break;   case <value>:    break;   default:    break;  }      

Don't foget the break. It will execute each block or case untill it comes up against one.