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

In .Net core, if you call Enum.IsDefined to check if the passing in value existed in an enum, you should ensure types are the same.

ArgumentException: Enum underlying type and the object must be same type or object must be a String.