So I have been looking through some code I wrote a few years ago for an economic simulation program. Each simulation has a large number of settings that can be saved to a file and later loaded back into the program to re-run the same/similar simulation. Some of the settings are optional or depend on what is being simulated. The code to read back the parameters is basically one very large switch statement (with a few nested switch statements). I was wondering if there is a better way to handle this situation. One line of the settings file might look like this: #RA:1,MT:DiscriminatoryPriceKDoubleAuction,OF:Demo Output.csv,QM:100,NT:5000,KP:0.5 //continues... And some of the code that would read that line: switch( Character.toUpperCase( s.charAt(0) ) ) { case 'R': randSeed = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() ); break; case 'M': marketType = s.substring(3).trim(); System.err.println("MarketType: " + marketType); break; case 'O': outputFileName = s.substring(3).trim() ; break; case 'Q': quantityOfMarkets = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() ); break; case 'N': maxTradesPerRound = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() ); break; case 'K': kParameter = Float.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() ); break; // continues... }