Article ID: 40593
Article Last Modified on 7/5/2005
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.51
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2.1
- Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Service Pack 5
This article was previously published under Q40593
It has been reported that when the keyword "default" is misspelled, the C/C++ compiler does not generate an error and the executable code does not execute the "defualt" branch in any case.
This is not a problem with the C/C++ compiler. In C and C++ any name followed by a colon (:) is a label. In a switch statement the case and default keywords are special types of label which are used by the switch statement. When the keyword "default" is spelled incorrectly, it is treated as a label. You could use a goto statement to reference the label. The switch statement, however, does not recognize it. Since a "default:" label is not required by the switch statement, no error is (or can be) generated.
NOTE: It is not good programming practice to jump to a label that is within a switch statement from outside the switch statement.
Additional query words: 8.00 9.00 9.10
Keywords: kbinfo kbcompiler KB40593