Enum values().length vs private field

Question

I have enumeration like this:

public enum Configuration {
    XML(1),
    XSLT(10),
    TXT(100),
    HTML(2),
    DB(20);

    private final int id;
    pri         


        

Answer 1

I would recommend using values().length. This is far more elegant and the performance overhead versus using a constant will be negligable. Also, you eliminate the risk of the constant ever becoming out of step with the actual length of the enumeration.