Java Question: Is it possible to have a switch statement within another one?

Yes, but don't. If you need a further level of logic like that, place the second Switch in its own method with a descriptive name.

EDIT: By the example you've added, you've got two Boolean conditions. I would recommend against using switch at all, using if & else conditionals instead. Use (STRING.charAt(0) == 'y') as your test case, or something methodical like boolean isY(final String STRING) { return (STRING.charAt(0) == 'y' || STRING.charAt(0) == 'Y'); }

Yes. Switches break the language block statement pattern, but this is mainly because of C/C++ from which the switch statement used by Java is based.

In all three languages, the switch statement takes the following form:

switch(variable) {
     case n:
        statement 1;
        statement n;
        (optional) break;
     case n+1:
        statement 1;
        statement n;
        (optional) break;
     // Optionally more statements
     (optional) default:
        statement 1;
        statement n;
}

Because a switch statement breaks the traditional language pattern, many programmers wrap their multiple statements in a case using the traditional block style: { }

This is because most constructs in all three languages allow block style statements to be considered as one statement, but the switch statement does not require block style to execute multiple statements in a single case.

Without the break statement separating each case, there will be "fall through" - if case n was matched and did not have a break, the code under it (case n + 1) would be executed - if case n + 1 did not have a break and was matched, the default code would execute, if neither had a break, when matching case n, the code for case n, case n+1 and default would be executed.

The default is optional, and specifies a default action for a switch statement to execute. Typically, the default condition is either a generic handler, or a good place to throw an exception if the value could not logically be any other than the values in the switch statement.

To illustrate a switch statement executing inside a switch statement, take a look at this contrived example:

String message = null;
int outerVariable = getOuterVariable();
switch(outerVariable) {
     case n:
        statement 1;
        statement n;
        break;
     case n+1:
        int innerVariable = getInnerVariable();
        switch(innerVariable) {
            case 1:
                message = "IT WAS 1";
                break;
            default:
                message = "WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?  OH THE HUMANITY!";
        }
        break;
     // Optionally more statements
     (optional) default:
        statement 1;
        statement n;
}