Enumerations: Why? When?

Question

I am an almost-graduating computer science student, and throughout my coding career, I\'ve found very few instances where enumerations, except for canonical cases such as re

Answer 1

Consider some simple code:

without enums:

 int OPT_A_ON = 1;
 int OPT_A_OFF = 0;

 int OPT_B_ON = 1;
 int OPT_B_OFF = 0;

 SetOption(OPT_A_ON, OPT_B_OFF);    // Declaration: SetOption(int, int)

That look fine, right? Except SetOptions() wants Option B first and then Option A. This will go through the compiler just fine, but when run, sets the options backwards.

Now, with enums:

  enum OptA {On =1, Off = 0};
  enum OptB {On =1, Off = 0};

  SetOption(OptA.On, OptB.Off);// Declaration: SetOption(OptB, OptA)

Now we make the same error, but this time, since enums are different types, the mistake is caught by the compiler.

(NOTE: I'm not really a Java programmer, so please forgive minor syntax errors)