"Andrej Mitrovic" <andrej.mitrov...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mailman.28.1283307608.858.digitalmar...@puremagic.com... > >That is all that I thought enums are useful for. But apparently an >enum is a type and you can instantiate it.... and I don't even know >what an enum is anymore. I'll just stay out of this discussion for >now, lol. :)
This is the way I've always seen an enum: An enum is a custom type with a pre-defined set of possible values, each individually-named. That's the primary purpose. Typically, an enum will have a "base" type which determines the physical in-memory representation of the values and allows for a convenient (but not accidentally-invoked) one-to-one mapping between the enum values and certain values from one other user-chosen type (ie, the base type).
