Enums

• 08/10/2016
• 2 minutes to read
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An enum type is a distinct value type with a set of named constants. You define enums when you need to define a type that can have a set of discrete values. They use one of the integral value types as their underlying storage. They provide semantic meaning to the discrete values.

The following example declares and uses an enum type named Color with three constant values, Red, Green, and Blue.

using System;
enum Color
{
    Red,
    Green,
    Blue
}
class EnumExample
{
    static void PrintColor(Color color) 
    {
        switch (color) 
        {
            case Color.Red:
                Console.WriteLine("Red");
                break;
            case Color.Green:
                Console.WriteLine("Green");
                break;
            case Color.Blue:
                Console.WriteLine("Blue");
                break;
            default:
                Console.WriteLine("Unknown color");
                break;
        }
    }
    static void Main() 
    {
        Color c = Color.Red;
        PrintColor(c);
        PrintColor(Color.Blue);
    }
}

Each enum type has a corresponding integral type called the underlying type of the enum type. An enum type that does not explicitly declare an underlying type has an underlying type of int. An enum type’s storage format and range of possible values are determined by its underlying type. The set of values that an enum type can take on is not limited by its enum members. In particular, any value of the underlying type of an enum can be cast to the enum type and is a distinct valid value of that enum type.

The following example declares an enum type named Alignment with an underlying type of sbyte.

enum Alignment: sbyte
{
    Left = -1,
    Center = 0,
    Right = 1
}

As shown by the previous example, an enum member declaration can include a constant expression that specifies the value of the member. The constant value for each enum member must be in the range of the underlying type of the enum. When an enum member declaration does not explicitly specify a value, the member is given the value zero (if it is the first member in the enum type) or the value of the textually preceding enum member plus one.

Enum values can be converted to integral values and vice versa using type casts. For example:

int i = (int)Color.Blue;    // int i = 2;
Color c = (Color)2;         // Color c = Color.Blue;  

The default value of any enum type is the integral value zero converted to the enum type. In cases where variables are automatically initialized to a default value, this is the value given to variables of enum types. In order for the default value of an enum type to be easily available, the literal 0 implicitly converts to any enum type. Thus, the following is permitted.

Color c = 0;