C++: Enumerations

Bjarne-stroustrup
 

Create an enumeration of constants with and without explicit values.

 

enum fruits { apple, banana, cherry };
 
enum fruits { apple = 0, banana = 1, cherry = 2 };

Note that, unlike in C, you can refer to the type here as fruits.


Works with: C++11

C++11 introduced “strongly typed enumerations”, enumerations that cannot be implicitly converted to/from integers:

enum class fruits { apple, banana, cherry };
 
enum class fruits { apple = 0, banana = 1, cherry = 2 };

These enumeration constants must be referred to as fruits::apple, not just apple.

You can explicitly specify an underlying type for the enum; the default is int:

enum class fruits : unsigned int { apple, banana, cherry };

You can also explicitly specify an underlying type for old-style enums:

enum fruits : unsigned int { apple, banana, cherry };

SOURCE

Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.