to me, its not to far off from php, if you happen to be a web developer like me
then again, php is based on C, so it should "look" like it
as for your programming question, if i understand it right, you want only the if statement to run and not the code after it
any if statements after the one your concerned about, if they match the condition, would execute normally
you may wanna use a case statement as it would be a little more efficient in my opinion
as i'm trying to come to grips with the mechanical side of arduino, the programming side is the same. you have this language. it's capable of doing all kinds of stuff, and theres usually many ways of doing something. you need to figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. you can use an if statement; a case statement; etc... your experience with the language and how much time you want to invest will usually dictate what you will do, code side (and probably mechanical side as well)
my 2 cents anyways.
-Mario