Enum of long values in C#

Question

Why does this declaration,

public enum ECountry : long
{
    None,
    Canada,
    UnitedStates
}

require a cast for any of its values?

Answer 1

The default underlying type of enum is int. An enum can be any integral type except char.

If you want it to be long, you can do something like this:

// Using long enumerators
using System;
public class EnumTest 
{
    enum Range :long {Max = 2147483648L, Min = 255L};
    static void Main() 
    {
        long x = (long)Range.Max;
        long y = (long)Range.Min;
        Console.WriteLine("Max = {0}", x);
        Console.WriteLine("Min = {0}", y);
    }
}

The cast is what is important here. And as @dlev says, the purpose of using long in an enum is to support a large number of flags (more than 32 since 2^32 is 4294967296 and a long can hold more than 2^32).