Comments on: Enum conversion. Why Oh Why?

By: Thomas Weller

Thomas Weller — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:11:31 +0000

Why _should_ this be possible?
These are two different datatypes, and you have to be explicit about converting them. This concept is called ‘type safety’…

By: Ramon

Ramon — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:43:42 +0000

Well I don’t get it why you should not implicitly cast from enum to byte. However, I find it very logical that you need to cast from byte to enum explicitly.

By: Jason Jarrett

Jason Jarrett — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:18:19 +0000

@Pawel Piotrowicz
@Justice
@Steve Py

Although it doesn’t appear this way (through the post). I mostly agree with everyone – This is the exact feedback I was hoping to receive.

I spent some time working with some legacy code where just about every “Entity” had a byte property type (that ‘mapped’ to a related Enum type). The conversion of the two back and forth has become extremely annoying, (it’s only 6 characters isn’t just 6 characters in my case – it’s more like wasted time…). Unfortunately I lost sight of some of the ideas given by the good comments made above.

Thanks everyone for clarifying.

By: Hakan Forss

Hakan Forss — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:53:55 +0000

In VB.NET i does. This has bitten me once or twice!

By: Steve Py

Steve Py — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:52:41 +0000

Because a byte is a byte, and an enum is an enum, regardless of how it is stored.

They drew a line in the sand regarding implicit casting. If it’s too annoying, well, there’s always VB.

By: John Sheehan

John Sheehan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:25:18 +0000

You could use a struct instead:

public struct FooNum
{
public const byte Will = 1;
….
}

Since it’s a const, you can still switch on it (although you don’t get the nice VS switch snippet support). Just an option. I do this in a couple places and it works well for those situations.

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Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:45:24 +0000

[...] Elegant Code » Enum conversion. Why Oh Why? [...]

By: Justice

Justice — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:20:11 +0000

It *does* just work. It clearly forces you to separate enums from raw types both in your thinking and in your code, and makes the practice of conflating the two much more challenging to pull off accidentally.

By: Pawel Piotrowicz

Pawel Piotrowicz — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:17:47 +0000

What’s the problem with:
byte b = (byte)FooEnum.Will;
?

It’s only six characters longer, and it clearly states what it does.