Can I use bitwise OR for Java Enums

Question

Suppose you have an enum Direction

enum Direction{
    North,South,East West
}

Could I write a method that uses bitwise or\'s to compare mu

Answer 1

Not directly, but if you add a primitive (e.g. int) field to your enum, you can OR that int value.

However, the resulting value is of int (which can not be implicitly converted to boolean, much less back to enum).

Probably you would be better off using an EnumSet instead. This is much more idiomatic to Java.