Question

I was practicing the other day and I came accross this error with a string for a switch:

Cannot switch on a value of type String. Only int values or enum constants are permitted

I’m not sure how I would fix this so I came here for help. I am using Eclipse. Here is the source, the second VARIABLE (in caps) is where I get the error:

public class Switch {
public static void main(String[] args) {

    Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

    System.out.println("Please enter a command: ");
    String VARIABLE = input.nextLine();

    switch (VARIABLE) {
    case "start":
        System.out.println("Machine started!");
        break;

    case "stop":
        System.out.println("Machine stopped!");
        break;

    default:
        System.out.println("Invalid command");
    }

}
}

It’d be cool if someone can help me with this. I’m relatively new to this so I’m not sure if any of this even makes sense.

Answer 1

switch (VARIABLE) {

switch with Strings are supported from Java 7 onwards. I guess you are using lower version of java you need to either upgrade your java version to 7 (or) remove String from switch and use supported types.

Here is oracle tutorial on switch statement.