Two enums have some elements in common, why does this produce an error?

Question

I have two enums in my code:

enum Month {January, February, March, April, May, June, July,
        August, September, October, November, December};
enum Shor         


        

Answer 1

My suggestion here is to have just one enum, as they are the same type. If you want short aliases to type less in your code (even if I wouldn't advise you to do so), you can do:

enum Month {
 January, Jan = January,
 February, Feb = February,
 March, Mar = March,
 April, Apr = April
 May,
 June, Jun = June,
 July, Jul = July,
 ...};

And to have different presentation names (short and long), you should have two distinct string arrays that are indexed by the enum.

char[MAX_MONTH_NAME_LENGTH][12] month_long_names = {
  "January", "February", ...
}

char[3][12] short_long_names = {
  "Jan", "Feb", ...
}

printf("month %d long name is %s, and short name is %s\n", May, long_month_names[May], short_month_names[May]);