A branch is the outcome of a decision, so branch coverage simply measures which decision outcomes have been tested.
This sounds great because it takes a more in-depth view of the source code than simple statement coverage, but branch coverage can also leave you wanting more.
Determining the number of branches in a method is easy. Boolean decisions obviously have two outcomes, true and false, whereas switches have one outcome for each case�and don't forget the default case! The total number of decision outcomes in a method is therefore equal to the number of branches that need to be covered plus the entry branch in the method (after all, even methods with straight line code have one branch).
In the example above, returnInput() has seven branches�three true, three false, and one invisible branch for the method entry. You can cover the six true and false branches with two test cases:
