Thread: understanding switch vs. if / else

I wrote a program that was supposed to replace an tab in the input with '\\t', any backspace with '\\b' and the backslash itself was to be replaced with '\\\'. Here is what I wrote initially:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
     int c;
     while( ( c = getchar() ) != EOF ){
	  if( ( c = '\t' ) ){
	       printf( "\\t" );
	  }
	  else if( ( c = '\b' ) ){
	       printf( "\\b" );
	  }
	  else if( ( c = '\\' ) ){
	       printf( "\\\\" );
	  }
	  else
	       putchar( c );
     }
     return 0;
}

Obviously it does not work the way I wanted it to. Then I wrote the same program using a switch statement:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
     int c;
     while( ( c = getchar() ) != EOF ){
	  switch ( c ){
	  case '\t':
	        printf( "\\t" );
		break;
	  case '\b':
	        printf( "\\b" );
		break;
	  case '\\':
	        printf( "\\\\" );
		break;
	  default:
	       putchar( c );
	  }
     }
     return 0;
}

The second version works correctly. Why does the first one not work? I know it will be something simple, but I am missing it totally.

~/

Aww crap -- well that is worth a good laugh. Thanks a lot Salem. I don't think I had my head on straight this morning.