How to assign string values to enums and use that value in a switch

Question

Basically a series of titles will be passed into the switch statement and I need to compare them against the string values of the enum. But I have little to no idea how to do th

Answer 1

You can't have an enum with an underlying type of string. The underlying type can be any integral type except char.

If you want to translate a string to your enum then you'll probably need to use the Parse or TryParse methods.

string incoming = "doctor";

// throws an exception if the string can't be parsed as a TestEnum
TestEnum foo = (TestEnum)Enum.Parse(typeof(TestEnum), incoming, true);

// try to parse the string as a TestEnum without throwing an exception
TestEnum bar;
if (Enum.TryParse(incoming, true, out bar))
{
    // success
}
else
{
    // the string isn't an element of TestEnum
}

// ...

enum TestEnum
{
    Doctor, Mr, Mrs
}