Its quicker than C Conditional Statements exclusive for integral types like:
- Integer
 - Double
 - Char
You may see that you need 
break;statements at the end of every case. Well, they didn’t make the switch statement so well. The C authors apoligize for it. but anyhow, this is Defensive Programming 
Example
int c; 
scanf("%d",c);
 
switch (c){
 
	case 'a':
		break;
	case 'b':
		break;
	// so on so forth
}