The string compare has a lot of branching and looks at both strings. The hash method one checks the hash of the test string(size_t) with the size_t of the other string. The hash itself, say fnv1a, can be very quick(a xor and a multiply I think per character) I think I remember testing this and it was quicker. ill try to find the test, but it is easily done. Either way, it's the only way to use a switch statement this way