[java] Switch with if, else if, else, and loops inside case

For the purpose of my question I've only included case 1, but the other cases are the same. Let's say value is currently 1, we go to case 1 and our for loop goes through the array to see if each element matches with the whatever_value variable. In this case if it does, we declare the value variable to be equal to 2, and we break out of the loop. The problem is that when i highlight the other break(in eclipse), it says that the breaks are attached to the for statement as well, but i only wanted the for statement to be attached to the if statement, not the else if statements as well. I thought because there are no brackets for the for statement that it would only loop for the if statement but eclipse says otherwise(else if also loops from 0 to the length of the array).

  switch (value) {
  case 1:
     for (int i = 0; i < something_in_the_array.length; i++)
        if (whatever_value == (something_in_the_array[i])) {
           value = 2;
           break;
        } else if (whatever_value == 2) {
           value = 3;
           break;
        } else if (whatever_value == 3) {
           value = 4;
           break;
        }
     break;
  case 2:

  // code continues....

In this case, I'd recommend using break labels.

http://www.java-examples.com/break-statement

This way you can specifically call it outside of the for loop.

Seems like kind of a homely way of doing things, but if you must... you could restructure it as such to fit your needs:

boolean found = false;

case 1:

for (Element arrayItem : array) {
    if (arrayItem == whateverValue) {
        found = true;    
    } // else if ...
}
if (found) {
    break;
}
case 2:

If you need the for statement to contain only the if, you need to remove its else, like this:

for(int i=0; i<something_in_the_array.length;i++)
    if(whatever_value==(something_in_the_array[i]))
    {
        value=2;
        break;
    }

    /*this "else" must go*/
    if(whatever_value==2)
    {
        value=3;
        break;
    }

    else if(whatever_value==3)
    {
        value=4;
        break;
    }

but i only wanted the for statement to be attached to the if statement, not the else if statements as well.

Well get rid of the else then. If the else if is not supposed to be part of the for then write it as:

           for(int i=0; i<something_in_the_array.length;i++)
                if(whatever_value==(something_in_the_array[i]))
                {
                    value=2;
                    break;
                }

           if(whatever_value==2)
           {
                value=3;
                break;  // redundant now
           }

           else if(whatever_value==3)
           {
                value=4;
                break;  // redundant now
           }

Having said that:

• it is not at all clear what you are really trying to do here,
• not having the else part in the loop doesn't seem to make a lot of sense here,
• a lot of people (myself included) think it is to always use braces ... so that people don't get tripped up by incorrect indentation when reading your code. (And in this case, it might help us figure out what you are really trying to do here ...)

Finally, braces are less obtrusive if you put the opening brace on the end of the previous line; e.g.

  if (something) {
     doSomething();
  }

rather than:

  if (something) 
  {
     doSomething();
  }