Declaring an Enumeration

Enumerations are handy to use as fields and properties in classes.

enum Day:
    Sunday
    Monday
    Tuesday
    Wednesday
    Thursday
    Friday
    Sunday

class Action:
    [Property(Day)]
    _day as Day

Enumerations are also handy in preventing "magic numbers", which can cause unreadable code.

Definition: Magic Number Any number outside of -1, 0, 1, or 2.

Enumerations technically assign an integer value to each value, but that should generally be abstracted from view.

enum Test:
    Alpha
    Bravo
    Charlie

is the same as

enum Test:
    Alpha = 0
    Bravo = 1
    Charlie = 2

Recommendation Except in special cases, do not assign numbers.

Exercises

1. Think of another good instance of using enums.

Go on to Part 14 - Exceptions