When declaring an enum, should you force the type to byte for under 256 entities?

Question

If you have an enum in your application and you only have a few items, should you force the underlying type to be the smallest possible type?

    enum smalle         


        

Answer 1

You should not assign a certain integer type to enumerations and let C# fall back to the default int¹ but let the .NET environment figure out the best "size" for the enum. As JaredPar said, if you change the data type, you should definitely check whether it actually helps.

The thing is that 32-bit integers are "natural" on x86 processors because they can be easily align in an optimal fashion.

¹ By default, the associated constant values of enum members are of type int